Adventures in Parmigiana

If you know me, you know I don't normally cook. For most of my life I considered putting a carton of Easy Mac in the microwave to be cooking. In fact, I've burned Easy Mac. So imagine the first time I made chicken parm. Are you seeing pools of blood? Perhaps sirens are blaring in the background of your mind as you imagine this great tragedy. These were my thoughts. I was scared shitless as I made dinner for my boyfriend's birthday. I was going nuts in my adorable black French Connection dress and lingerie. My phone wouldn't stop ringing for the first time in my life and things were smoking...ahh. Except dinner was amazing. My effort paid off and it was the perfect night.

The same can not be said for the second time I made chicken parm for Ron. Of course, this time I cooked in his apartment. Let me preface the rest of the story with some background information. Ron's roommate just moved from their NJ apartment to Chicago for law school. As roommates, they accumulated general necessities together. Unfortunately, TJ had the bare necessities of a kitcken. Things such as silverware, plates, pots and pans were nowhere to be found. I forgot things I needed at my apartment. We forgot to get sauce at the A&P and had to go to the ghetto Pathmark to get it.

ANYWAY...we get back to Ron's apartment and I start cooking. And everything. Goes. Wrong. I start making the chicken and things seem to be going okay even though I'm using paper plates to bread the chicken and egg is everywhere and sigh. To spare you boredom over the little details, I'll give you the fast forward version. In addition to cutting myself with a REALLY BIG KNIFE, I accidently dumped a whole shaker of red hot chili pepper in my dad's signature sauce. I scooped as much of it out as I could and since we had a lot of sauce, I figured it would be okay. I finished cooking and made the pasta (which I should have used a bigger pot for so it didn't really cook and it all stuck together, ew) and served everything.

Now. I like spicy food. Ron likes spicy food. I put hot sauce on everything. I don't even like to eat eggs without hot sauce. So when I tell you this sauce would FUCK UP YOUR DAY...I am not kidding. It was near impossible to even ingest this meal. After an hour of cooking, a decent amount of time spent at the supermarket and gathering materials, and MUCH time spent salivating over impending chicken parm...it sucked. :-(

Of course, Ron is too much of a sweetheart to say so, but I can confidently tell you this meal was awful.

And this is why I don't cook.

Leather Saturday

I've never considered myself a "girly-girl." In fact, I denounced pink as my favorite color in 7th grade and refused to wear anything in the prissy hue, instead reaching for black and army-print garb. Yet when I walked into the biker club's pig roast last Saturday, I felt a little bit girly (and I wore black! Ripped black!). Perhaps it's impossible to feel tough next to so much leather and do-rags? Hmm.

Anyway, it was probably one of the better Saturdays I've experienced lately (up until about 10 pm, but that's another story). There were cool people, good food, and cold beer: 3 must haves for a good party. (There were also Jaeger shots, which may or may not have fueled the bad part of the evening...meh, woops) It kind of goes to show you how wrong it is to judge a book by its cover, however cliche that may sound. If I had seen some of the men and women from that party at another bar or on the street somewhere, I probably would have been scared of them or, if I were with my sorority sister friends, thought I was better than them. Yet when I let my guard down and had to try to make them like me, I realized we're not all that different. We all have our insecurities and our confidences. We all get a little too drunk sometimes. We all inappropriately yell that our male friends are wearing mirrored sunglasses to be able to stare at tits all day (Or maybe that's just me). More than anything, we all want to fit in and have a good time. Maybe it's easier for some and harder for others, but isn't that everyone's goal in the grand scheme of things? To be well liked? Without people to share things with, life pretty much sucks. I can tell you from experience. I've been there. Well maybe not really there, but I know what it's like to feel alone and not have anyone to call or spend time with, to not have your family around you. And, to reiterate, it sucks. Nothing is nearly as happy as it should be, and everything is ten times as sad. There's no one there to diffuse your anger, which in turn multiplies until everything makes you mad, no matter how innocuous.

Sorry for getting off track here, but I suppose that happens sometimes. In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is that we all need to open up and not instantly reject people because of where they're from or what they look like. Maybe we all need to find the biker babe inside.