And I call myself Cookinggal

Apparently, you’re not supposed to dump a big pan of cooking oil down the sink drain.

But come on, we’re talking about a girl who didn’t know what it meant to “brown meat.” If you’ll recall, when I first saw that on a recipe I said, “I know the meat is brown but what do I do with it?” Is this really that surprising?

I was at my neighbor’s house for our Granbury Girls State Fair-themed night. I was excited to use my Twinkie fryer (thanks, Lyndsay, for the gift three years ago) that I had never taken out of the box.

I thought it could be a fun activity for all the GGs to do together.

I brought the frozen Twinkies, the fyer but not enough cooking oil. So hostess Susan pitched in with some of her cooking oil. Then new neighbor Camille ran home and got some vegetable oil to add to the vat. My point? There was A LOT of oil.

The whole frying process was kinda gross as you can imagine. The Twinkies tasted good...but in a gross kinda way. It’s kinda like if you worked at McDonald’s and you knew how they made everything, you probably couldn’t eat it. Thus was my relationship with the fried Twinkies.

So when some of the GGs were off touring the house I decided to clean up all the fried Twinkie mess that I had made. Cul de Sac Carrie commented, “Wow, it even smells like the state fair!” I picked up the giant vat of oil, proceeded to dump it down the drain and said, “Yeah, and it even sounds like the state fair!”

Neighbor Karen stayed calm. She said, “Um, you might want to run some hot water and pour some soap down the drain.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you’re really not supposed to pour oil down the drain,” she said. She then explained something about congealing and clogging.

Now Frank had told me something similar about bacon grease but he had never mentioned that this applied to all oils. How was I to know?

When hostess Susan came back I was furiously running hot water down her drain and using up all her soap. I confessed what I had done. Kerry “with a K” said she knew of a good plumber. Others talked about how they always pour their oil in coffee cans.

So I really was the only one who didn’t know!


Later after we decided we had sufficiently cleansed the drain, I heard two GGs discussing my oil ignorance. “How could she not know that?” they said. Then this morning the word had spread to the men of the cul de sac. I was walking and my neighbor pulled up in his car and said, “I heard about you and the grease! You don’t know what to do with grease!!” He then laughed maniacally and drove away.

You know what I’m like? I’m like those people who try out for American Idol who can’t sing but love to do it. I love to cook but I really suck at it. Although I have to say, when it comes to meat, I'm a browning fool! (Yes, it's a verb!)

Even cousinValerie knows more about cooking than me!