Non-i-licious was the premier chef. She made Martha look like…(well, I take that back. Non had a huge love for plastic flowers (circa 1964)).

This is the woman whose vegetable soup is legendary in most of Pennsylvania, and a portion of Central Florida. She worked as a butcher and as the school lunch diva. She could literally take any remnants from the fridge and make something delicious. For crying out loud, she could take bread, meat, and cheese and make a sandwich that could make you cry!

After S and I got married, she began to send me recipes. When she stayed at my house, she tried, really tried, to teach me to cook.

I, unfortunately, lack the patience to sit there and measure stuff to the exact level and make homemade pie crust. I much prefer Heather’s Patented (only not really) Dump and Dine Technique. This technique is quite elaborate. You dump the ingredients in the crock pot and turn it on. 8 hours later, there’s dinner!

Non, I’m sure, is weeping in heaven for my lack of cooking skills. She is probably asking JC and all the saints to send me some cooking ju-ju. I’m not a complete disaster (I mean, I can boil water), but I’m not at all good. My most famous claim to fame is salad dressing. And a crock pot chicken recipe that I invented–which I have used to “cater” a wedding and several church dinners.

However, I recently hit the trinity. My third worst cooking disaster ever (actually, now that I think of it, it’s my fifth).

1. When we were first married, we ran out of aluminum foil, so I put plastic wrap on top of pork chops. I placed said pork chops in the oven. When I opened my oven, I could no longer find the plastic wrap. I phoned home. My father answered the phone and laughed at me for 20 minutes. When he caught his breath, he told me not to eat them, or else I’d kill us both.

2. Turkey, 2010.

3. Ham, 2010. After Thanksgiving, I figured I was done with turkey for a while. My parents were coming for Christmas, so I got a ham. It was funny, you know, when I opened the ham at 5 AM to put it to cook—I thought maybe it smelled a bit off. By the time my parents arrived at 7 AM, my whole house smelled a bit, shall we say, rancid. My dad helped me move the bad ham to the back yard, where it froze solid and stuck to the inside of the pan (for a very long time–we were a hit with the neighborhood cats).

4. 2 weeks ago, I decided to make fancy chicken for dinner. Fancy means I actually cook it in the oven instead of the crock pot. So, I took the chicken out of the freezer and popped it in to the microwave to defrost. Funny thing about defrost on the microwave—you have to actually push it to make it work. So, rather than pushing defrost, I hit cook, and literally blew up the chicken. I’m not talking mild popping sounds…I’m talking I BLEW UP THE CHICKEN (like blow open the microwave door…).

5. Finally, I think this one is the nail in the coffin of Heather’s cooking career—I burnt dinner in the crock pot. I literally forgot the food was in there, and…well, you can actually make jerky in the crock pot.

Poor Non….she totally tried.