Confessions of the Culinarily Challenged

The Queen had a day off again today and so she went where the Queen is inclined to go... the bookstore. Yes, I admit it. I'm a junkie.  But while I was at the book store I was distracted by something about which I am NOT a junkie... sort of.  Alright, background.  We are all well aware of the fact that the Queen is unable to boil water without first notifying the local fire department so that they can be on stand-by.  It's true.  I admit it.  I'm not proud but there it is.  Now there's this one other itsy bitsy detail that I've left out.  You see, despite the fact that I can't cook at all, I have a thing for cookbooks.  In fact, I collect them.  They're  just WONDERFUL!  The pictures always look like something I'd like to eat!  The recipes sound delightful!  They have pretty covers! They look great on the bookshelf in the kitchen!  And one day maybe I'll even learn to cook by osmosis!!!  It could happen, people!!!!

Okay, it's not exactly LIKELY to happen, however I did find myself inexplicably drawn back to the cookbook section of the bookstore today, and it was there that I discovered something amazing.  And by amazing, I mean disturbing.  There are all kinds of really WEIRD cookbooks out there!  And if I think it's weird, let's face facts, it's REALLY WEIRD!!!  I took some pictures because I just knew you'd all want to get a load of this!

Let's start out with this little gem.

Okay, this one is Good Eats 3.  What's hard to see, however, is the fine print at the very bottom of the cover.  It says "With a blueprint and stickers to create your own sock puppet..."  I say again... SOCK PUPPET!!!  REALLY?!  It's a cookbook with a sock puppet theme?! These two things are related?!  Are you kidding me?!  Now as weird as I find that, I have to say that I also find it somewhat threatening.  It looks to met like our Indiana Jones costumed chef is about to club that sock puppet to his right in the head with a broccoli spear!  Just what kind of cooking are we doing here?!!!  It's like cooking for the mafia!

Okay, this next book apparently is based on the ever popular Game of Thrones series of books.  I understand that part.  MPH (My Poor Husband)  has a cookbook based on the Patrick O'Brian series of books which involves the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.  Granted, I'm pretty sure all those recipes cause scurvy, but at least those dishes can actually be cooked.  My problem with this book is there on the cover as well.  It includes "Direwolf Ale" and "Auroch Stew."  Now I'm not a big grocery shopper either but I ran by the store today to check and they claimed not to have any direwolf meat in stock at all!!  Granted, it was a Piggly Wiggly and maybe I'd have had more luck if I'd gone across town to the Food Lion, but frankly I was willing to go with a  sample size of one and just extrapolate my data from there.  I'm kind of lazy like that, statistically speaking.

Alright, this next book is truly the Truck Food Cookbook.  And they aren't kidding.  These are recipes for food that you could buy from the back of food trucks.  I'm not sure exactly what a food truck is, but it would seem to be sort of like an ice cream truck but without the ice cream.  Do these things come through your neighborhood?  Because they don't come through mine!  I'm kind of curious about them though.  Do they play music?  Do hungry adults come running when they show up?  Yes, dear readers and loyal subjects, it would seem that the Queen learns something new every day.  Maybe it's a Yankee thing.  Either that, of I've mentally blocked the existence of Southern food trucks from my mind for all these years.... about 29 years if anyone is wondering.

And now we shall examine the Complete Book of Knife Skills.  I found this one and just started giggling.  You see, the urge to buy it was STRONG!  I seriously want it just to leave it sitting out in the kitchen for when MPH comes home from his trip.  Its presence in our house combined with the fact that I do have access to big ass knives should just scare the bejeezes out of him!!!  It'd be HUGE FUN!  But then I found this:

100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know.  Seriously?  There are a hundred of them?  I saw this and the giggling just stopped.  Now not only do I have an inferiority complex about my lack of cooking ability, but it just multiplied by 100 because that's how many recipes I'm down!  I spent a few moments beating my head against the side of the book shelf but then the nice book store employee asked me to stop so I sulked off to find this book:

How to Cook Everything: The Basics.  And here, at last I felt like there was hope!  I flipped through this one and it turns out that it even tells you how to boil an egg.  FINALLY!!!  Someone realizes what "the basics" really means!  This guy is willing to tell me how to do everything!  He assumes that I know nothing! And he's RIGHT!!!  It felt the clouds part, the sun shine and the angels sing!  Needless to say... I bought it.  I'll either finally learn something or it'll look great with my others on the shelf.  I thought I was finish there and was heading to the check out when I found one more book that I just had to share.

I'm So Happy It's Happy Hour: Sinfully Delicious Cocktails for Every Occasion.  And that, dear readers and loyal subjects, was when I knew life was good.  If that book wasn't written for the Queen, I don't know what was.  And so it just goes to show, cookbooks can make even the most culinarily challenged among us happy.  Now, who wants a cocktail and a boiled egg?!