The plastic chef

I don’t cook fancy. I do cook. More accurately, I microwave. I really need two of these. Three would be better.I never had a lesson. Mostly I just read the boxes. At times this slowed me down as I muddled my way through my on-the-job-training, much to the merriment of my mother-in-law, who asked me one day why I had potatoes arranged two-by-two on the counter. Well, the recipe said to used pared potatoes. Now I know why “pared” was misspelled.Then there was the salt cod dinner. You buy it in a little wooden box, something that appealed to me. I knew I could use that box for lots of things later on. (As a kid, I used to love those bags the onions came in, using them for nets in my games.) It was a nice hunk of fish for not much money. The only trouble was it was a little salty. I am a bit of a salt freak, to the detriment of my blood pressure. I got it down, but it was pretty salty. Nobody else was able to eat it. Seems you are supposed to soak the fish in water overnight to get the preservative salt out of it.I learned to make two casseroles. They came out pretty good, too. Everyone complimented me on them … at first. Sometimes, if I get something right like this, I like to repeat it the next week. After about six weeks they were begging for mercy. I didn’t catch on by myself. My culinary tastes are somewhat dog-like in that I can eat the same thing repeatedly without any problem. I once ate baloney sandwiches for lunch three weeks straight, to the horror of my boys. Of course, I varied it with relish one day, then mustard, then mayonnaise. Repeat.u u uI also was not trained in nutrition, sometimes oversimplifying the menu. When entertaining one evening during my earlier days, I served a guest and her two young boys those frozen clams casino. Nothing else, just clams. The younger boy asked his mother in bewilderment where the rest of the food was, whereupon, I am told, he was quickly shushed. This may or may not have involved kicking under the table. To this day, I have to be reminded when I cook hamburgers that some people like something to balance the meal on the side, not just more hamburgers. Does relish count if I use a lot of it?I have a little wooden box on my dresser that holds my tie tacks and cuff links. Curiously, I smell vaguely of fish when I wear my jewelry. Bill Abrams resides (and stores his recipes in a somewhat salty hiding place) in Pine Plains.