Thank you, Rebecca, last week for your cake recipe. I think I may actually have an opportunity to make it soon. My only problem is that I don’t have a bundt pan—will a regular 9x12” cake pan or whatever suffice? I hope so. It is difficult being a single cook, since you don’t have all those snazzy specialty gadgets that these recipes call for. And anyway, who really knows what dough hooks are? What the heck does it mean to cut the butter into the recipe using a pastry blender? It is no wonder that people just make things out of a box these days.

My cooking style can be best described as “clueless.” For instance, of late I’ve encountered an age-old philosophical problem—does the expiration date really mean anything? I have some packets of instant Quaker Oatmeal in my cupboard with an expiration date of May 2005 on them. I’ve been eating them, and they haven’t killed me yet. I know stuff like that never really goes “bad,” per se, but then I think about how scientists speculate that witch-hunts in the Middle Ages were fueled by psychedelic hallucinations caused by moldy flour or something like that. Hmmm….

Or take the pound of raw roast that has been in my freezer since February. According to guidelines I looked up on the Internet, this roast is still technically safe to eat for up to nine months. But again, it goes back to being a single cook who doesn’t really cook much beyond quesadillas… I didn’t have the proper freezer paper to wrap it in, so I just put some Saran wrap around the Styrofoam packaging. Brianne, who grew up on a farm in Indiana and knows everything there is to know about beef (which goes to show that veggie-lovin’ NNPCW opens its doors to everyone), now tells me that my roast will be tough and taste like cardboard. Sheesh, my mom is a vegetarian and my dad didn’t mention this meat-prep tidbit. How would I know?

This, my friends, is why I advocate for everyone living on her own for at least a little while. Get away from the protective confines of the campus dining hall or the warm coziness of your parents’ kitchen. Be independent; venture out on your own. I learned a lot in school—I can tell you about everything from sun/Son puns in medieval English literature to the 1949 Chinese Revolution. But it is pretty apparent that I knew jack about cooking until I started living independently.

And that’s not all. Other skills I’ve acquired since getting an apartment range from changing the oil in the ‘Stang to assembling furniture. After a rather traumatic experience attempting to disassemble a bed frame the other night (which ended with David’s dad and me setting up shop in the dining room to drill holes in the bed with noisy power tools), I now know what a ratchet is. I can also tell you the difference between a Phillips and a flathead screwdriver. I even bought myself a hammer last week. I still have a lot to learn, of course, but I’ve come a long way.

With this learning process comes confidence in your own abilities. It wasn’t that I lacked opportunities to learn the above life-applicable skills. When it came right down to it, though, I wouldn’t go to the trouble to figure it out on my own as long as someone else was ultimately responsible. But because I’ve had to take responsibility for my own life since coming to Louisville, I’ve discovered that I can cook and change my car’s oil. I can find my way around a strange city by myself. This has helped me realize that I can learn other skills, too, whether that is managing an office budget for NNPCW or using power tools to drill holes in my wall.

We can be ineffectual and dependent on others as women, or we can find maturity and wholeness in taking responsibility for ourselves. I would definitely prefer the latter.

“For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death.” --Proverbs 8:35-26

Kelsey