By Request: Neurodivergent K's Kitchen Adventures!

People think I'm exaggerating when I say I cannot cook. But really, I cannot. Between not noticing I'm hungry until I can barely stand up & difficulty sequencing tasks & a penchant for weird things happening around me, the kitchen is not a safe place for me to try to do shit. I can microwave things. And that's about the extent of what I can do consistently.

For your laughing at me pleasure, here is a selection of stories of my kitchen mishaps.

Anecdote 1:
When I was about 16, I was making macaroni and cheese, because fuck yeah macaroni and cheese. I was taking the pot across the kitchen to strain the pasta & had a partial complex seizure. Somehow during this I managed to spill the water alll the way up my arm, giving myself 2nd degree burns. There was nothing going on to trigger the seizure, I didn't feel it coming, it just couldn't wait 10 more seconds. I still have a bit of discoloration on my forearm.

Anecdote 2:
Many years later I lived at a Y, which had a fairly decent kitchen, and no microwave. We (my friends from the shelter and I) were going to watch a movie in the common area, so we chose to make some popcorn.

Um. So. It's absolutely possible to burn half of the popcorn while the other half doesn't pop at all. Putting butter in? That does not help. I would say it hurts. Setting it on fire may have been helpful in terms of cleaning out that damn pot.

Speaking of cooking at the Y. We tried to make s'mores over the stove (yeah, I'm a rebel...). My marshmallows would not catch fire. The one thing I wanted nice and toasty wouldn't burn. Go figure, right?

Anecdote 3:
My first apartment! The Pit of Despair! It was not a nice apartment, but it was mine! I had a toaster oven, a stove, an oven, and it was kind of a terrifying place. But it's hard to screw up too badly with a toaster oven, right?

Things to add to the list of things I have set on fire: Frozen chicken legs. While otherwise still frozen. It was utterly inedible, because the parts that weren't charred were frozen. This is when I started mostly getting prepackaged food, because seriously? This is getting to be a bit much.

Adventure 4:
Did you know plastic bowls, even those marked microwave safe, they melt.

It wasn't even in there that long-I like to put frozen potatoes, cheese, butter (high fat needs ftw) and bacon in a bowl & let it all melt together.

I don't like it so much when the bowl joins in the melting fun.

And 5:
Other things that can catch fire and be raw at the same time: PANCAKES. Usually I can make a decent, if slightly wrinkly, pancake, but apparently not always.

6:
I posted this one on facebook. Cookies, like pancakes, can be on fire and undercooked at the same time. They were supposed to be chocolate chip, but the chips all melted so they were just chocolate, & it was an extremely smokey fire. Oh. And potholders? They can and will ignite.

7:
This is more like 7-77. I've set the teapot on fire. I've set the burner the teapot was on on fire. I've set a pot on fire. I've set a burner in no way related to the water I was trying to boil on fire, too.

and the most recent:
I am decidedly a firebender, or alt universe Katniss (the girl who set things on fire, rather than the girl who was on fire), or something.

I set a potlid on fire trying to make hardboiled eggs. Granted, the potlid was on the stove. I kind of suck at getting the dial to burner thing right. It was before I had coffee.

Had it just cracked with the heating up and cooling again thing, I'd understand.

But nooooooooo. GIANT EFFING FLAMES! And then it cracked and, while it was supposed to be shatterproof glass, it decidedly shattered, albeit all in one place. None of the shards flew more than 18 inches.

But.

FLAMES.

Activities of Daily Living, ladies, gents, and others: I fail them, unless making fire by boiling water is the newest ADL.