Where, oh where have my cooking skills gone?

 The Prude possesses few culinary skills. The ones she has are hidden under a bushel, where they cower until she yoo-hoos for them. Then they come scampering out to be put through their paces.

The Prude and her skills begin any new cooking project with determination.  A promising  recipe, the desire to elicit adulation from the family, the need to bring something edible to the church fellowship meal–all these and more encourage her and her meager skills down the path to culinary glory.

She motivates the reluctant skills with a description of fabulous food. She wheedles them into action by promising that she will remain imperturbable during the cooking process. She whips them into a frenzy with flour, whisks, room-temperature butter, and all the paraphernalia cooking skills dote upon.

Alas, she isn’t a patient or kindly taskmaster. At some point in every cooking venture, her skills have a small mishap. A little stumble. Something a more tolerant cook could compensate for. But not The Prude. She begins to mutter. It rises to a grumble. Pans and utensils clatter. The Prude stomps about the kitchen and that is all her high-strung skills can handle. They high-tail it back under the bushel and sit  quivering, leaving The Prude to finish a dish or a meal alone. She tries to coax her skills back but it is too late.  Nothing to do but forge ahead, skill-less.

Take last Sunday.  The Prude’s family would be coming for dinner. She decided on meat loaf.

She never makes meat loaf but convinced her culinary skills to try.

The Prude doesn’t touch raw meat.

This thing helped to an extent. 

The Prude remained calm.

She mixed a bunch of stuff in, but the skills were getting agitated. Too much onion? Too little oatmeal? 1 or 2 cans of tomato soup?

He skills were dubious about putting the mess in the crockpot but The Prude didn’t listen.
She left for church. The edgy skills tried to stand guard over the blob in the crock pot. But then something– a gurgle? a hiss from the settling stack of meat?  startled them enough to send them scurrying  to the safety of the bushel and they haven’t been seen since.

The Prude knows they left halfway through the cooking process. Because instead of a loaf of meat, she returned home to this mountain.