Recipe For Disaster

The older I get, the more I feel I need to learn and do new things. Since I’ve never been known to cook, I decided that I would start to learn some basics. My mom is an excellent cook, but everything I know about cooking, I learned from my dad. That means I can cook breakfast, savory snacks and barbecue. Seriously, who needs anything else?

I read a lot of books and magazines. In one of those magazines I subscribe to, there’s a regular feature called “Eat Like a Man.” There are usually recipes to go along with dishes it features. In one of those articles, it said a man should be able to whip up a decent salad dressing. I figured that would be a good place for me to start.

The recipe had a number of ingredients we didn’t readily have in our kitchen, so I had to first shop for those. When I was ready to begin, I assembled all the utensils, measuring devices, bowls and containers I would need to do this. I wanted to get this right, so I was pretty obsessive-compulsive about what I was doing. My wife and daughter opted to stay out of the kitchen.

It took me nearly an hour to make enough dressing for dinner that night. I wasn’t expecting it to be anything spectacular, but my wife and especially our daughter loved it. My daughter loved it so much she asked me to make more, as she wanted to have a salad for her lunch at school. That was a good thing, so I happily whipped up another small batch.

Each night the demand for my salad dressing increased, so I doubled up on the ingredients so I wouldn’t have to make it as often. Frankly, by the end of the week, I was getting tired of having to make salad dressing. I mean, it was like having to make ketchup – so much easier to buy it ready-made in the bottle.

Then my daughter told me she shared it with friends at school. They also loved it, and I ended up having to quadruple the recipe just so I could keep her and her friends supplied at lunch. I finally had to tell my wife and daughter that I was taking a break from “cooking.”

Alan Wong and Roy Yamaguchi can relax now. I plan to keep my day job.

rnagasawa@midweek.com