Top chef.

I do not cook.

Wait. Let me correct that statement. I know how to cook eggs -- I cook a mean scrambled egg -- and I know how to make a sandwich. Beyond that, it was always easier just to watch my mom cook and stay out of the way. Because she is an absurdly good cook. I will use the word "absurdly" with no guilt, because that's what she is. And what's incredible about her gift is that it doesn't involve insane checking of recipes like some peoples'. It's all about pinches and hints and dollops and sprinkles.

She just has INSTINCTS. Cooking instincts. It's not really fair, ultimately. You can't learn it, they can't teach it; you just have it. And she just has it. And when someone just HAS something, it's not wise to spend your time trying to duplicate that. You notice it, you accept it, and you sit back on your well-upholstered chair and you consume their gift. You don't waste time trying to tailor your own gift. You. Eat. Her. Gift.

So fast forward to now. I can cook nothing. I've never attempted. What was the point? She could make it better. And I wouldn't want to cook in front of her anyway for fear of looking stupid. (Which I am, when it comes to cooking, let's be fair. I'm Captain Stupid.)

SO. My friend Mark and I go to the store yesterday and begin shopping for a night of cooking at my apartment. This should have seemed like an ill-formed idea, since neither of us could cook, but instead it felt like an adventure, and we were both very excited. So we purchased whole wheat penne, zucchini, an onion, a thingy of garlic (what do you call it? A clove? But isn't that just one?), spicy jalapeno chicken sausage, and marinara sauce with whole plum tomatoes in it.

Only to come home and discover that Specimen 3 -- friendly yet messy gay boy -- is comandeering the kitchen with his mess and will not be budged until an hour too late to start dinner. So we postpone. Until tonight.

Tonight dawns. Slightly before 8:00, which is the appointed hour, I casually look up how to cook zucchini. That seems to be enough prep for me. Mark arrives. I've begun chopping the zucchini and the onions. Mark pours two glasses of the Oregon wine he's somehow found. Sauvignon Blanc. Of course I'm enchanted. We continue cooking.

One whole zucchini and one whole onion chopped go into a pan and start sauteeing. You like my use of vocabulary there? Yeah -- sauteeing. It's a cooking word, don't worry about it. It means to...cook...in a certain way. Three cloves of finely minced garlic go in. Minced -- to chop very small-ly. Some fresh ground pepper and some salt. Nothing is yet on fire. How magical and delicious.

Through some miracle, the onions start to become translucent and the zucchini begins to soften. We start cooking three links of the spicy jalapeno chicken sausage and add the Classico basil sauce with whole plum tomatoes to the onion, garlic, and zucchini combination. We start the noodles cooking. There are good smells permeating the kitchen. Again, nothing is on fire. This makes me nervous.

We add the sausage to the sauce and taste it. It's not quite right, so I add a dollop of red wine. Look at me and the dollops, now. My mother's daughter.

I taste it again and it's better, but it's still not quite right and I don't know what to do about it. Out of nowhere, I get an instinct that we should add vinegar. Ew. This could be a terrible idea. We add in a swig of vinegar and taste it again.

Oh. Oh yes. Somehow it did exactly what I wanted it to. It added an edge to the sauce that I didn't even know how to add until I'd added it. How is that possible? I literally jumped up and down after I tasted it. Mark can confirm this.

And the sauce turned out IN-credible. It was really really good. I honestly can't even believe it worked out. Even Joel and Sam, who came by later with more wine, tasted the sauce and said it was delicious. It was my first foray into cooking and it was not only successful but also delicious.

I suspect foul play.

*Post-script: please inspect the photograph in the upper right corner of this blog entry for conformation that the author did indeed complete a meal. One can confirm that the meal was homemade by its presence in a pot.