List Maker/ Chef

There is an art to being unemployed. It would be very simple to spend entire days in pajamas covered in images of barking dogs. It would also be easy to slip into a bathing suit, grab one of those novels that has been sitting unread on my shelf since I entered the working world two years ago and spend an afternoon by the pool. Other temptations include, but are not limited to, spending hours in Chic Fil A hanging out with old friends over chicken biscuits, watching all of my pirated Desperate Housewives DVDs and just rolling around on the floor with Rosie for hours on end.

All of these temptations have been considered. Some have been attempted. A few (ok, a lot) have actually been completely fulfilled. But, the thing is, at the end of the day, being unemployed, even when you're living in a rent free house where they'll occasionally feed you, is still kind of hard. Mostly because eventually you start to feel kind of worthless.

So, I have begun making lists. Like, kind of insane lists. They include absolutely everything I have to do. This way when I "let Rosie outside" I can mark it off the list and feel that nice sensation of accomplishment one doesn't get very often in the world of being unemployed. In fact, the lists are multi functional. They can also be used for the purpose of creating tasks to put on them. For example, this week, at the top of my list was "Learn how to make Pad Thai."

I'd put that on the list last Friday and had been considering it for a few days so when my mom asked me to make dinner last night, I agreed, under the condition I could make pad thai. Despite her distaste for most Asian food she went along. I think she probably understands the list system.

As it turns out, my pad thai making goal was going a little beyond my usual culinary prowess. (That prowess that includes having several take out restaurants on speed dial and a lifetime supply of Lean Cuisines in my refrigerator) However, I can read a recipe and generally I can make a decent dish when I set my mind to it so I didn't see any reason pad thai would be any different. I had no idea.

The first problem I faced in my quest was the issue of grocery shopping in Shelby, NC. This is a town that only learned what hummus was about 6 months ago, totally foreign food that it is. Sushi sounds like some kind of crazy raw fish trend imposed on us by "those yankees up north." So, with all of this knowledge, I'm not sure why I was remotely surprised to find that the local Ingles didn't offer thai rice noodles or tamarind. (It's also worth noting that I had to call home from Ingles to have my mom google tamarind to determine if I should be looking in the spice or produce section so I can't be too disappointed in Shelby for that one.)

After purchasing my fish sauce, Japanese rice noodles (I figured they were at least in the same region) and some chopsticks—I thought we should be as authentic as possible— I headed home to begin my creation.

I had found the recipe online so I set my computer up in the kitchen and went to work. Early on I could tell there might be some timing problems. I think reading the words "make sure the pot is on high and continually stir" as you're supposed to be throwing other stuff in made me understand that I was going to be facing fairly inevitable disaster. But I had no idea how bad.

My mom was upstairs. Rosie was at my feet. And I started to systematically destroy the kitchen and create the strangest pad thai ever made. First, it turns out that "shallots" have the same affects on my eyes as "onions" so there was a great deal of crying at the start of the project. The next problem came in that I was supposed to fry some peanuts in the hot vegetable oil and then take out the peanuts while leaving the oil on high heat before adding in the next ingredients. I'm deathly afraid of hot oil so I chickened out on taking the peanuts out and just tossed everything in on top of them, thinking that couldn't be that big of a deal. Apparently it is. Apparently it leads to a lot of black, burned peanuts in your pad thai, which are just as tasty as you might imagine.

Another large problem came in the form of the Japanese Rice Noodles. They didn't work. They were hard and stringy so I tossed them in the sink and threw in some good, old-fashioned angel hair pasta. The thing was, by this point, things had gotten pretty frantic. I was just dumping things in because the recipe insisted that I keep the heat on high and oil was flying everywhere, Rosie was barking and my mom kept yelling down stairs to see why I was screaming. Halfway through I realized I'd forgotten to add eggs. I cracked them on the hot pan, almost burned my hand off, stepped on Rosie and then threw in some bean sprouts. I was supposed to "sprinkle" in chili powder, but by that point in the process things were completely out of control. I dumped all the chili powder on one piece of chicken. A piece of chicken that later, as I was eating the pad thai and trying to avoid burnt peanuts, nearly killed me.

I finally finished. Breathless and exhausted, I called for my mom to come and enjoy our Thai/Italian meal. Her face, upon walking into the kitchen, was the first time I really realized how out of control things had gotten. There were noodles strewn across the sink, egg all over the counter, open containers everywhere and her wok pot may never be the same again. Interestingly enough though, the pad thai didn't taste half bad. I'm now determined to get it right—and maybe do it with a little less insanity.

I think I'll put that on the list for next week.