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Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please!

Today, I managed a feat of extraordinary daring. I tempted fate, I walked the thin edge of danger, I thumbed my nose in the face of adversity.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen... I made meatloaf.

And it tasted good, even!

Ok, ok, so I used a mix. But as a person who has screwed up tater tots, I consider this a big step forward.

I used ground turkey instead of ground beef, and it still tasted fine. In fact, it tasted so good that I - ahem - overindulged a bit. It's a bit heavier than I was expecting, so I am still quite full.

That being said, I'm going to have some for a bedtime snack.

Teaching myself to cook has been a really long, hard process. I'm terrible at it. I'm pretty good at following directions, but I usually screw up that one key thing that sends it all tumbling into disaster.

I really want to teach myself at least the fundamentals of cooking before I get married.

Now, I don't think I'm falling into the trap my mother set for herself: playing domestic engineer on a full-time basis. The fact is, I don't know what my job will be, what my hours will be like, or anything else. I might get home an hour later than Dave. Then again, I might get home two hours before he does - in which case, it would make sense for me to cook dinner. (Dave would do the dishes, of course. Right, dear?)

Screwing up a meal for just myself is one thing. I can manage to choke down just about anything, and there's no embarrassment about the consistency of the sauce or the char on the buns. But when there's someone else there, I hate screwing up a meal. I feel bad that they have to eat the horrible concoction that I prepared, or I feel bad that we have to wait while we make something else, or I feel bad that we're going out to eat instead of eating more cheaply at home.

Which is another reason I want to learn how to cook. It's cheaper. Most of the things I buy are pre-prepared things, like the Voila! Chicken and Pasta Dinners or microwave dinners. The most complicated thing I do for the usual meal is heat something up or mix something together. These pre-prepared foods are much more expensive than the "raw materials" for the same meal would be.

Yeah, it's easier to just throw something in the stove, rather than chop and peel and mix and bake. But there's the satisfaction in making food, as well. That meatloaf (while made from a seasonings mix) wasn't the best meatloaf I've ever had. But I made it. I mixed the egg and the turkey and the spices together. I baked it. I put the sauce on it. I brainstormed the corn side dish. And dammit, it tasted good when I was through.

Best of all, I didn't set off the smoke alarm, my neighbors never saw me run out onto the patio with a flaming pan, and I didn't take one bite and throw the whole deal down the garbage disposal because it was inedible.

It tasted fine.

Hopefully, by the time I move up to Canada, my cooking will be just fine, too. And Dave won't be embarrassed by his wife's cooking.