My high school had a course called Independent Living, in which students in the senior class were taught the basics of running a household on their own. How to write checks, how to keep a budget, how to sew buttons and how to cook. The culmination of this course was the Senior 2 Senior Dinner where the students budgeted, bought and cooked a dinner for the senior citizen home down the street. My senior year, the dinner consisted of pork chops and mashed potatoes.
But that wasn't the year I took Independent Living. I took it my freshman year due to an overcrowded Spanish class. At first I was completely scared to be stuck in a room of seniors who would probably know way more about living than me. Boy, was I wrong. Most of the seniors had no idea how to do the tasks set in class and the rest of the class didn't care because Independent Living was a pass/fail course. You didn't need to get an A, you just needed to show up and not sleep through it. I felt confident in the check writing class, and got flying colors in budgeting. My sewing skills left much to be desired (I still can't sew a button without major blood loss) and the teacher was never satisfied with my dusting...but my real weak spot was cooking. I was rubbish at it. My omelet didn't flip. My cake didn't rise. My pierogis fell apart in the pot. Half of what I cooked came out charred and the other half just looked like a mixture between vomit and radioactive waste. Needless to say, I wasn't top on the list when it came to assigning cooking jobs for the Senior 2 Senior dinner. In fact, I was low enough on the cooking totem pole to rate "salt shaker filler".
So the week before the dinner came around and we were supposed to do the cooking dry run. We weren't going to have to go shopping or decorate, just cook the meal so we would be prepared for the real thing the following Saturday. The only problem was that the dry run fell on the same day as Senior Skip Day. In case you don't know, skip day is when the seniors all play hooky and go somewhere fun to hang out. The teachers know that it's going to happen, but they don't know when, so they usually mark important days on the calendar and hope whoever is planning it pays attention. Apparently whoever was in charge of picking the date didn't care about Independent Living because I walked into an empty kitchen on dry run day. Well, it wasn't quite empty. There was me, my teacher, and a giant ham. She shrugged and told me that I'd get the kitchen to myself today and then promptly took up a position in the far corner. Maybe it was to have privacy to read her romance novel, but I think it was more of fear of me and my mad cooking skillz.
I stared at the ham for several long minutes. I knew the basics of the recipe. Our class had decided to do a luau complete with flowers, grass skirts and pineapple ham. You know what I'm talking about, right? The big baked ham glazed with brown sugar with artful placement of pineapple slices on top. Very yummy, and the directions looked easy enough but as I gazed at the printout in front of me all I could think of was the unfortunate incident involving me, cinnamon rolls and my cooking partners quick reflexes with the fire extinguisher. Even the most simple of cooking tasks seemed to go wrong in my hands and doing something on this scale was more than daunting. But there wasn't a lot of choice, and with the entire class out partying it wasn't like anyone would be witness to me failing so I decided to give it a shot.
Slipping on an apron, I set to work. I dug out a roasting pan and dumped the ham inside, trying to match it's placement to the one in the picture. The next step involved scoring the ham, and while I was smart enough to know that didn't mean "10 out of 10", I wasn't smart enough to figure out the part that told me to insert cloves in the center of each diamond. What the heck was a clove? Was it like a clover that had just been misspelled? Did they want me to put plants on the ham? I knew that sometimes ham was served with onions so I figured that clove was a fancy name for an onion and cut up one to insert. Then I was supposed to make a brown sugar glaze to pour over the ham. Note to anyone wanting to make glaze, it involves more than pouring a bag of brown sugar over the ham. I know that because my teacher gave a small sound of despair when I upended the bag and then just shook her head, going back to her book. I waited for five minutes, hoping that things would look more 'glazey' but no dice. I went back to the handout and saw the fine print telling me that glaze included pineapple and lemon juice, some spices and crap. Since I had already jumped the gun with the brown sugar, I just dumped the rest on top of the ham and tried mixing it by hand. Not the best way to make glaze. Finally, I figured that the pineapple slices would cover the worst of the mess and decided to get that ready.
Did you know that there is a website called "How to cut a pineapple"? This simple website has clear instructions and even photos to help you along. Sadly, this website was started in 2005, ten years after I stood in the classroom kitchen and pounded a pineapple with a frying pan. The leaves wouldn't come off, I broke my vegetable peeler on the side of it and the darn thing kept poking me. I couldn't figure out how anyone on earth ever ate a pineapple, much less cut them up into perfect little circles for hams. I decided that I would just smash the heck out of it and put the mush on top of the ham. The pineapple flying off the counter from a poorly-aimed smack once again drew the focus of my teacher who calmly informed me that a knife would work better. It worked…somewhat, and after 30 minutes, I had 2 perfectly round slices of pineapple and several handfuls of pineapple mush. I slopped the mush on the ham and mixed it with the so-called glaze and then placed my two perfect slices on top, sticking a cherry in the middle of each slice with a toothpick. Just like the handout showed.
I finished up and popped the ham into the oven and left to go to my other classes. I had the pie pass from my teacher which was literally a plastic piece of pie that had "I'm cooking" written on the bottom. Those were our ticket to get out of classes five minutes early to come back and check on whatever was in the oven in Independent Living. Since my attempts at baking had usually fall into a state of disrepair early on, I had never needed to take the pie pass. Now I held it up proudly as I waltzed out of Zoology to go check on the ham. My fellow freshman were suitably impressed and I fairly sauntered down the hallway to the kitchen classrooms. As I got closer, I realized I was holding my breath. I didn't want to inhale for fear of smelling smoke or burnt ham or burnt-something-else. Finally, I paused outside the door and took a deep breath. Instead of inhaling the familiar scent of smoke and charred meat, I got a whiff of something amazing. It smelled sweet and rich and quite like a ham should smell. I bounded inside, eagerly inhaling the aroma. Even my teacher looked pleased as she watched me open the door to the oven and pull out the pan.
...to reveal something ham-shaped. My scoring had been a little heavy and I ended up with ham chunks lying in a mixture of glaze and pineapple mush. Even my two perfect slices of pineapple had been tipped off to the side, and now instead of resembling a crown of glory...they were more like little ears. But it wasn't burnt. There were no smoking bits or suspicious lumps or anything that remotely looked like vomit. So far, it was the best looking dish I had ever made in class. My teacher helped me lift it out of the oven and tried to figure out a place to cut us off a slice. Finally, she just speared a chunk with a fork and plopped it onto a plate. The two of us took small forkfuls and eyed each other warily. Her, because she knew I hadn't produced anything edible yet and me...well I was a bit nervous about teachercide by way of ham. Then I took a bite. The ham was soft and juicy and the glaze had actually congealed into something delicious and even the pineapple mush gave off the right tang. I grinned at the teacher while she complimented me and went back to get another chunk.
I had cooked. It wasn't easy and it certainly didn't turn out pretty, but it was edible. No, it was better than edible. It was good!
And when the Saturday of the Senior 2 Senior dinner came along, I sat on the back counter and filled salt shakers, waiting until everyone freaked out before letting them know that knives worked best on pineapples.
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