How to be a grown-up: COOKING

Sometimes I think there's a class I missed in college.

I can do wonders with numbers. I can tell a hell of a good story. I can outline the differences between multiple versions of The Maltese Falcon. I can talk Piaget and Freud with authority. I'm legally certified to teach 12 grades. But sometimes things happen and I wonder, how did I not know that? How did that fact somehow slip through the cracks on the 17-year sidewalk of my education?

This post is about cooking. I cooked plenty with my mother growing up, and I still call her constantly while I'm hovering over the stove wondering what I did wrong. But there are certain things that I don't know until she tells me, and from what I can gather, some of them are actually important.

There is no substitute for sugar. You can talk the benefits of splenda all day long, but if you try to make carmelized onions with it, it dissolves and leaves you with flavorless onions stuck to the pan. I used to make a wonderful asian-style lettuce wraps recipe (I have been too afraid to calculate the WW points), and I must have cooked it five times before my mother joined me and barked, "What are you doing? You have to use real sugar. The flavors won't bind. Real sugar brings out the flavor Leah!" How was I supposed to know that? Did I miss the day on how to yell with authority about sugar binding flavors?

Real cooks approximate. People on diets measure. Rachel Ray is the expert on not being exact. To avoid writing a long-winded rant about her, I'll focus on just this one unfavorable characteristic. Watch her cook and she'll say things like, "Oh, a pinch of this," and "A few shakes of this" and "A handful of that." Which is all fine and good if you're Rachel Ray, or Gordon Ramsay, or some famous sous chef in NYC, but for the rest of us who are actually concerned with the amount of muffin top hanging out of our jeans, it is necessary to measure. This lesson was especially confusing to learn. I have been on a diet of some form or another for most of my life. Even before I dieted, I knew that white bread was bad, and fat-free was good. I've also been a struggling, learn-as-I-go cook for most of my life, and it's mighty confusing when the people you observe cooking use this haphazard approximate measurement system. It makes me wonder if any famous cooks eat the food they make. But this lesson my mother taught me, in a very positive way. I interpreted it as, "If I'm logging 3 points for using extra virgin olive oil, I don't want to accidentally eat 4 points-worth and get fat. My mother, goddess of wisdom and kitchen-related wonder, responded with, "If you're logging three points for olive oil, you want to ensure that you enjoy every last drop." Truer words have ne'er been spoken.

Pre-ground thyme = mortal sin. My mother walked into my apartment a few weeks ago and was quite happy with what she saw. It's beginning to look more lived in and homey, as it should: We've been here almost 2 years. It's about damn time. But she did have one complaint, which she voiced quite vocally, as is my mother's custom: I had a tiny container of ground thyme in my spice box. Apparently, this is a moral sin, on the same level as involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide. Little did I know that a) thyme should NEVER be pre-ground, I should buy it and then grind it as I need it, and b) it goes bad REALLY quickly in ground form. This, of course, brings up an even more interesting question (and I like to picture Ice-T asking it in a super intimidating way, as if interrogating a possible witness to the aforementioned homicide): WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THYME GOES BAD? I mean, aside from the usual things that you'd expect: war, famine, sacrificing of the first-born, tulips wilting dramatically in a windowsill while Death Cab for Cutie plays in the background. The answer is that I don't know what happens when thyme goes bad. I don't know what warning signs to be on the lookout for. I just googled it, and no combinations of Thyme, Expires, Stale, Spices and a variety of other words lead me to the answer. I did, however, find several websites that believe time / thyme is a witty play on words. Sad. I guess I'll just have to be on the lookout. Still, I wish I'd known.