Sous Chef 4

It's a bit of a running theme in the blog posts around here, but the Mild Wife is a better cook than I am, so it's not uncommon for me to pitch in by doing a lot of the prep work. I can actually make a pretty decent meal from scratch these days, but since the Mild Wife tends to have more of an interest in the process, she often finds the recipes. That usually means that she will take the lead at the stove, whereas I will man the cutting board and the surrounding areas. All in all, it generally works out for us.

However, this has had an interesting side effect: I generally know what I'm talking about when it comes to chopping and mincing. I've had to do it a few times, after all. So, when the Mild Wife showed me a video of some celebrity cooking show, I immediately noticed the technique. In this case, it was actually the celebrity's friend at fault, but the lady stood a bell pepper up, with only the tip touching the cutting board. She then proceeded to slice it vertically, using her other hand to balance the pepper and keep it stable.

Let me tell you, alarms were going off in my head right away. That just didn't seem safe to me. All it'd take would be a slight slip of the hand, and you would be slicing through mid-air instead of through a bell pepper. There's no fail safe or backstop at that point, either. You're just ... slicing. At best, that seems like a poor way to get strips. At worst, you're going to hurt yourself.

I must have said something out loud, because the Mild Wife chuckled when she heard my commentary. She didn't disagree with me, but given how infrequently I will criticize cooking, she couldn't help but chuckle. Here I was, expressing actual discomfort with what I was watching.

However, in hindsight, it was a sign of things to come. I mean, I'm still cooking and I'm still learning things, so my skillset and, therefore, my preferences are expanding as well. In this case, we happened to come across a recipe where a lady was suggesting a quick and easy dinner, so we perused the video. At one point, though, she needed to flatten something out. Rather than use a rolling pin or any sort of tool, she just leaned on it with her forearms. Yeah, she used her forearms as a quasi-rolling pin.

This time, the Mild Wife exclaimed before I did, but let's just say that there were multiple arched eyebrows as she did this. I've never seen someone do that before, and neither has the Mild Wife. I could sort of understand if it was a dough and she had short-sleeves on, but that was not the case here. She had a sweater with long sleeves, and the item she was trying to flatten out was already seasoned. So she was effectively rubbing salt, pepper, and a few other things all over her arms. Then, a few seconds later, her sleeves fell down over her forearms and got the insides of her sweater all dirty.

It was ... not pretty. I was amazed that someone would hold this up as thing to do, but there it was. Remember, this was content that someone had put out into the world as an example of a good recipe. I didn't go looking for someone else's kitchen to criticize, she volunteered this particular clip.

Once the initial shock of the forearms had subsided, the Mild Wife then laughed about how I was once again starting to express opinions about cooking technique. Well, let me tell you: I may not be the best cook, but I certainly know not to do that.

Rest assured, I won't season my forearms any time soon.