Cookery
My dad has been an electrical engineer for almost forty years now, and in the past it was always he who had gone out to work. However, a few years ago he was made redundant for a spell (he's since returned as a contractor with better hours and more money) and he ended up looking after my sister and I. This meant that he would have to... dum dum dum... cook.

Cooking is an activity best suited to those who can recognise their mistakes and patiently figure a way out. This statement does not apply to my father, a man who refuses to ever turn around and go back the way he has come when driving somewhere, no matter how lost he is, on the grounds that doing so would be admitting failure.

As such, we were treated to various gastronomic delights - the homemade crisps we dubbed the crippins as they were utterly black and likely to have the same effect on you as the good doctor would have done. There was his attempt to make giant chocolate buttons by melting the chocolate then frying it, there was the steamed chicken that was so tough we physically couldn't eat it, the meatballs he had cooked until it actually required a hacksaw to open one to verify he had not, in fact, served us bits of wood, and the "ready steady cook" dish he attempted to recreate that ended up with him serving up a large dish of potato halves floating in cooking oil. Nothing else.

But the best effort was after he had started to get the hang of things. He was in the kitchen, pottering away, while my sister was in the front room. Suddenly she heard a slight *whomp* sound and a worried shout of "Charlotte..." (for such is her name). As she tells it, she opened the door to be confronted with the sight of dad standing in front of a blazing pan of oil with a look of panic on his face. What to do, what to do? Then he realizes. He doesn't go for a damp teatowel, oh no. His face lights up, he grabs the pan, rushes past my sister to the front door, which he opens before hurling the pan through and slamming the door shut again. With an expression of mingled satisfaction and worry he then turned to my sister and made her swear not to tell ANYONE about what happened. That went out the window when mum got home and asked "MatJ's dad... why is my pan in the front garden and why is the grass all singed?"



Edit: I forgot about the time he accidentally washed the dishes in paraffin and tried to pin the blame on me...
( MatJ LOOK, Sun 28 Nov 2010, 10:45, Reply)