The Un-Pampered Chef

Originally posted by Aunt Becky at Mommy Wants Vodka.

I was shocked by how much space my new house had. We’d gone from cramming ourselves into a wee three-bedroom condo without storage space to a house that had three floors and so much storage space that it seemed obscene.

It was beyond startling when, the weekend that we moved in, my new neighbors began showing up at my doorstep with plates brownies and cookies and treats to introduce themselves and to meet us. Our condo building was filled with incredibly unpleasant older, single cat ladies who didn’t like us. They’d have been more apt to leave a bag of poo on our doorstep than a plate of cookies.

With the exception of the people we shared a porch with, there was no one in the building who didn’t hate us. I still don’t know why.

We’d just happened to move into Pleasantville, which is what I STILL call my neighborhood. House after prefab house filled with pleasant, kind people. On Halloween, there’s a house that hands out hot chocolate and hot toddy’s. Another grills hotdogs and passes out beer and soda. If I had a binder, I’d write, “Aunt Becky + Her Neighborhood = Tru Luv” in loopy letters, surrounded by a bunch of pink, puffy hearts.

(sorta like I do with my Pranksters. You all have pink puffy hearts around you)

So when my neighbor, my son’s friend’s mother, invited me over for a “Pampered Chef” party, I was thrilled. Well, thrilled might not be the proper word. I was thrilled to be invited, but I liked cooking about as much as I liked grinding a lightbulb into my eye socket.

But I marched on over there for the party and sat down with a number of older women I didn’t know. Everyone was, of course, way friendly, but the person who was demonstrating the products began to blab. And she kept blabbing.

OMFG she kept on blabbing. I’d never SEEN someone talk so much. (as someone who routinely “talks paint off walls, THAT’S saying a LOT).

It was like one of those cooking shows I never watch because I cannot stand the blabbing. I mean, I love a good meal, but I’d rather cut my leg off than prepare it, or worse, watch someone who isn’t going to GIVE me the meal prepare it.

In the middle of her blabbing, I decided that I, too, could cook. And that I, too, needed THOSE SPECIFIC TOOLS to cook with. Certainly it wasn’t MY problem I couldn’t cook. It was because I didn’t have the Pampered Chef chopper-thingy! Or the cutting board! Or the grill thingy!

I blew a hundred bucks that night on crap so I, too, could be a COOKER-PERSON.

It took a week or so before my order came in. Immediately, I opened my miracle chopper thingy and put it together. I had fajitas I was gonna make! This was a WIN! Plus, my stuff looked so FANCY in the empty cabinets!

Only…the chopper thing didn’t really, well, WORK. The blades were always falling off, which meant that someone as dumb as me was tasked with slipping the blades BACK IN TO their rightful place. Without losing part of my thumb. It took me half an hour to cut up a green pepper, not including the time spent washing the stupid thing out. Had I used a knife, it would have taken less than five minutes.

That Chopper-Thing Was BULLSHIT.

The tiny spatula I’d bought, well, the handle fell off after a couple of months. The cutting board was fine, but nothing I couldn’t have bought anywhere else more cheaply.

I was a little discouraged, knowing I’d never become a Cooker-Person, but I cheered up when I realized that this meant I could eat more McDonald’s.

Those golden arches, they NEVER disappoint me.

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Tell me, Pranksters, what do you think of those in-home parties like Pampered Chef or Tupperware? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? I need a good laugh today.

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