Where there's smoke, there's dinner

Cooking takes on such a different meaning when you're living away from home. In high school I helped with dinner fairly often. I would come home after a long day to find my mom on the phone discussing her church calling, painting the ceiling, and dashing down the ladder to forward the laundry every half hour, and I would know that it was up to me to heroically save my dad and brothers from starvation. But it's different when you are the only person between you and an empty stomach every single day. Some days I come home and really enjoy the chance to be productive and creative in a non-homework way, but there are a lot of other days when I get home late and exhausted and think "Hmm, I could spend twenty minutes making something, or I could eat this bread straight out of the bag." Sometimes the bag wins. At least I know how to cook. There are a lot of girls out there who can barely manage to figure out how the toaster works, and I wonder how they survive. Of course, even though I cook more than most of my roommates, I am just as accident prone. As mentioned in my "Lessons from Apartment Living" post, my roommates and I have confirmed our suspicions that sausage grease is flammable, as well as discovering the flamability of less likely suspects, such as noodles and the cardboard under the frozen pizza. Every day when I come home and the apartment is still standing I feel grateful. Fortunately our smoke detector is on the other side of the kitchen, unlike at home where it was directly over the stove. Every time anything spilled over onto the burner, the whole neighborhood knew the McDowells were cooking again. I think it might be a good idea if I marry a firefighter.