Bette Porter – Cooking 101

How hard could this be? Bette Porter was an accomplished woman, a Gallery owner, an icon in the Art World…..yet here she was coming completely unglued. Wanting to prove that she could do anything she set her mind to, she was determined to cook for her new girlfriend Tina. The problem was, that “cooking” and “Bette Porter” were not two things that should ever be used in the same sentence. The kitchen was so not her domain.

So here she was one bright, cheerful Saturday morning. She had invited Tina to come to her house for dinner that night, but unlike the other times she decided not to order in, but cook a meal for Tina on her own. She knew how to read, how hard could a cookbook be to understand?

The plan had been set in motion earlier that week. She would quiz Tina asking her for some things that she enjoyed eating, find a recipe for each, make a list of her required ingredients and head to the grocery store to pick up the necessary items. Appeared simple enough.

As she wandered the aisles of the local grocery store, it was amazing to her that there could be so many selections for the same thing.

She had collected the majority of her ingredients, intent on making all of Tina’s favorites. The menu had consisted of, a light spring mix salad, followed by baked ham, scalloped potato’s, and asparagus spears. Dessert was simply going to be Tina’s favorite ice cream. Butter pecan, with a mixture of grilled peaches, watermelon, and pineapple fruit basted with an amaretto liqueur, honey and cinnamon glaze.

Checking off the ingredients on her shopping list, Bette discovered that she was missing just one item….the cream of tartar.

Softly muttering to herself, Bette wondered why on earth she would need tartar sauce for scalloped potato’s, but that’s what the recipe had called for, so she proceeded to the seafood section, and picked up a jar of the “creamy tartar sauce”. She double checked her list to ensure she had indeed found all of the items, and once satisfied that she had, she made her way to the checkout.

After unloading the items from her cart, Bette waited for her turn to pay. As she made her way up to the cashier to pay, there was an older lady behind her in line who had started to unload her items from her cart.

The lady had noticed the mix of items, and when Bette glanced her way she smiled and stated, “with that group of items you have there, looks like someone is planning a delicious meal.”

Smiling at the lady, Bette responded “Yes actually I’m making dinner for someone very special to me and these are all of their favorites.”

“Lucky someone if you ask me,” came the response from the lady.

“No, actually I’m the lucky one”, responded Bette. “But you see I’m not much of a cook, so this is a huge challenge to me to pull this off. I just don’t understand why you need all of these ingredients.“ Picking up an item and showing it to the lady she continued “For instance, what does cream of tartar sauce have to do with making scalloped potato’s? I always thought this was used for seafood?”

The lady looked at “Are you sure your recipe called for this?”

Pulling her shopping list out to show the lady, she pointed to where she had written down ‘cream of tartar’.

Upon realizing that Bette was dead serious, she started to laugh hysterically. As she wiped the tears from her eyes, from laughing so hard, she looked at Bette and taking the jar from her said “Oh no dear, this isn’t what you want.”

Perplexed, Bette looked at the lady and adamantly responded, “yes of course it is, the recipe clearly stated cream of tartar, that’s what I have cream of tartar sauce.”

Looking over at the clerk who was also in tears, the lady replied, “wait right here, I’ll get you the right item.” And with that she turned and disappeared up on e of the aisles. When she returned she handed a container of cream of tartar to Bette, and told her “this is what you wanted, not the seafood sauce.”

“Are you sure, this just looks like a white powdery substance?”

“Yes dear trust me, I’m sure.”

Bette thanked the lady for her help, paid for her groceries and proceeded out of the store…..leaving behind the older woman and the clerk in tears again hunched over form laughing so hard at the scene that had just unfolded before them.