You Never Grow Out Of It... I Promise!

Im sure many of you were, like me, total nerds in high school. Well, ok, so I wasn't a TOTAL nerd. The popular people knew my name... but I was never quite sure if that was just I went to a small school or if I just barely scraped by at the top of geekdom. Anyway, after college (where my acting skills lifted slightly out of the morass of high school geekiness) and living in NYC, I thought I was done making stupid mistakes, acting without thinking, and just in general making a fool of myself quite thourougly.

I WAS WRONG.

Here's the story of my awakening: My friend Queenie and her Hub-Unit have really taken me under their wing since hubband left and barely a week goes by that Im not invited to their home for a fabulous and gourmet homecooked meal. I try to reciprocate (and occasionally come up with a winner here at my place... like my allspice braised beef with onions...), but am very much not in the same class of cooking and hosting and hospitaliting (hopefully the ladies in my family don't faint on reading that as I was brought up to be a good SOUTHERN WOMAN and we ALWAYS hostess well...). Anyway, Im really just distracting you from the main point of my story here because its quite embarrassing, but since I started I'll get back to it.

>ahem<

Tonight after pottery, Q invited me to her place for some homemade Channa Del Sorba (I think I spelled that right) with garlic rubbed toasted como bread and a celery salad with shaved parmesan. We got to their place and I had her put me to work chopping vegetables, cause Im really good with the chopping! After that was done, I was wandering around the kitchen trying to find ways to make myself useful and we discovered that the water had boiled away completely around the split peas and tomatos for the soup. Had a brief half-discussion about maybe adding a touch of water and I picked up the glass next to the stove, poured about half a cup of the clear liquid into the pot and just as I opened my mouth to ask Q why the soup was fizzing suddenly, she shrieked with horror (and I hope a little amusement) and said THAT WAS 7-UP!

>sigh<

Yes, in my zeal to help I put 7-up in the soup. Not only did I put 7-up in the soup, I did it in someone elses kitchen, by sticking my nose in where it CLEARLY was not needed.

Its a good thing they love me, and Q knows enough about cooking to know most of the flavor of the soda would boil off as the soup simmered because otherwise I think I would be banned from their house forever... no more pizza and video game parties, or dinners with comedy on tv... unless they took place at MY house... and THEY brought the food.

So like I said, Im just lucky they love me and know USUALLY I can cook... otherwise I think I'd be up a creek without a can of beans...