If you heard Mrs. Martinez at Home Ec, you'd think she was teaching an entire class of beautiful women.
It's not that we were Miss Universe material, it's just that mac and cheese was a deceptively easy-looking dish.
I mean, mac and cheese was just mac stirred into melted cheese, right?
Yes... and no. Let's just say the theory was much simpler than the reality.
Mrs. Martinez told us to follow her detailed instructions to the letter.
First, we had to fill the pot two-thirds full with water, add a tablespoon of salt, and then put it on the stove.
I couldn't get the stove to light. The safety catch kept switching it off.
"Oh goodness, Samantha! Don't break my stove!" Mrs. Martinez said. "Aren't girls supposed to be gentle?"
I nearly karate-kicked the damn thing, but I didn't because I was gentle.
"You need to press it down longer," Zara told me. "Here, let me do it."
It lit on Zara's first try.
I took a deep breath. It's okay. Chill. It's just a stupid stove.
"And your hair..." Mrs. Martinez tutted. "It's just a fire hazard in the kitchen!"
I had already worn it in a braid, or it would have been flaring everywhere.
"I better not see any blue hair in the food," Mrs. Martinez said. "That would be just disgusting."
Like, as opposed to seeing any other colored hair in the food?
Usually, I'd expect this type of behaviour from certain high school girls (let's not name names), but from the high school teacher? I suppressed the sigh that nearly escaped and averted my gaze.
Luckily, someone screamed "Hot!" at the steam and spilled the uncooked mac across her entire work area. This required Mrs. Martinez's full attention. I mean, the girls weren't going to berate themselves, you know.
Zara and I were left in peace to grate the cheese while waiting for the water to boil. Mostly, I grated cheese. We had three chunks in different sizes and only one grater.
"Be careful not to scrape your fingers," Zara warned.
But this part was fine. Contrary to popular belief, I had helped in the kitchen before. I could cut and dice and slice, and grate. I was a regular food processor.
Satisfied that I wasn't going to top up the ingredients with blood, Zara went to check on our water. She yelled and dropped the lid.
"It's hot!" she told me.
"Samantha!" Mrs. Martinez's shrill voice called across the Home Ec room. My poor wolf ears.
And I'm sure I don't need to point out that the fallen pot lid was of no fault of my own.
But Zara might have been hurt, so I had no time to respond to the irate teacher. Instead, I went to check on Zara. She was okay, just taken aback by the heat of the steam.
In the end, we put the macaroni into the hot water with a long spatula, scoop by scoop.
"How long are you going to take just to put the mac in?" Mrs. Martinez complained during the lull when everyone's mac was in the pots and there were no more mishaps.
But you know what they say, there's always a calm before the storm.
A few minutes later, pots started to boil over. Mrs. Martinez screeched at the first one, and then the second one. At one table, the girls refused to even go near the boiling-over pot. They simply ran and hid on the other side of the counter.
"Turn off the heat!" Mrs. Martinez would scream. "Remove the pot from the fire!"
This turned out to be game-changing for me. I managed to take off our pot with a pair of oven gloves and put the whole pot into the sink. I helped save Krystal and Leia's pot too. The trick was to get it off the flame the moment the boiling water and mac got rowdy in the pot.
It was hot, the steam, and you needed to be quick.
But I saw how, at another workbench, one of the girls simply took off the lid and turned off the fire. That worked too, at a much calmer pace, I might add.
"I can tell that most of you have never cooked a meal in your life," Mrs. Martinez declared.
Eventually, all the mac was safely cooked and off the stove. Ours was really "al dente" in the sense that if we had taken it off any earlier, it would still be too hard in some places.
One of the pots, I think it was at Arlene's workbench, had burned.
It stank.
Mrs. Martinez made some of the girls open the windows.
Arlene and her partner had to re-boil another batch of pasta. Mrs. Martinez wasted no time tormenting them with her constant supervision.
Mrs. Martinez hated Arlene almost as much as she hated me. Poor us.
The cool air felt nice. I sighed a bit in relief. Then I looked back at my workbench. The cheese was grated. We needed to collect milk and butter from the fridge in front of the classroom, and we could start on the cheese sauce.
I looked at Zara, and Zara looked at me. "You collect the milk and butter. I'll drain the pasta," I decided.
Zara nodded. "Yeah, or else Mrs. Mar might pick on you again. Be careful. It's hot, though."
Poor Zara, she was worrying for me. I took extra care. I mean, it's just removing pasta from the pot, but I couldn't risk attracting more of Mrs. Mar's unforgiving attention.
I used the same spatula and an oven glove. I know I looked ridiculous, BUT I managed to remove the lid and got most of the pasta into the colander scoop by scoop. Then I simply emptied the last of it in with the others. By then, the pot was light and cooled.
So I wasn't a Killion in the kitchen. But I was okay. I could boil water and make a sandwich. And now, I could boil a pot of pasta. LEVEL UP!
"Oh my goodness, Samantha! What in the world are you doing?" Mrs. Martinez found her way back to me.
I put down the spatula and took off the oven glove. "I got all the pasta drained." I picked up the colander and showed her.
"Well, don't let it drip all over my floor!" Mrs. Martinez said.
So I guess I did good.
Zara came back with a measuring cup of cold milk and a wad of butter. "I can't tell how much butter is 2 tablespoons."
I looked at the wad and then at the tablespoon she was holding. It looked roughly the right size. I nodded. "Looks right..."
So we tried it. First, we (Zara) started the fire. Then we (me) put the pot back on and added the butter. A thin white film started coating our pot from the inside. It was only a little bit, but it didn't escape Mrs. Martinez's hawk eyes.
"SAMANTHA! You didn't wash the pot. The pasta water is going to burn on your pot. Go do it over with a clean pot!"
Okay. We took out a second pot. I turned the old pot over, and the half-melted wad of butter went plop into the new pot, splattering out a little, but we got most of it in. What next?
"Zara, we forgot to measure out the dry ingredients!" I realized when I checked the printout.
So we measured some flour and salt out, just in the nick of time. Carefully, we stirred the ingredients in.
I've never cooked before, and Zara had only ever made instant foods, but I've done science experiments before, so I figured we just had to do it the same way.
I turned down the fire to the smallest setting (I was trying to imitate a Bunsen burner amount of flame) and added the right amount of each ingredient slowly, making sure it got properly "dissolved" into the mixture.
Never mind science experiments, it felt like I was making a witch's stew.
From the smell our pot was making, we were doing good, which was a kind of magic all on its own. By the third cheese, Zara's eyes were bright with excitement.
"I can't believe I'm making macaroni and cheese from scratch."
Nothing had exploded at our workbench. We didn't even burn anything.
From the sounds and smells around us, the rest of the workbenches had varying success. I was sure there was more than one burnt cheese sauce just from the smells around me, but I tuned it all out, and soon we were stirring in the mac.
"Wow." Zara smiled as she took her turn to stir. She had been so excited, she pretty much grabbed the spatula from me.
I found myself grinning too.
We nailed it.
I turned the fire off under the pot.
"Quick! Let's scoop it out before it gets stuck in the pot," Zara said.
With our trusty spatula, we scooped out the pasta into our food containers. Then we went up to a side counter together to sprinkle on the toppings.
Zara chose some pepper and more Parmesan cheese. I sprinkled dried chives and then a little bit of dried chili flakes because I remembered Killion using it in pasta, and it was delicious. I only used a very little, though, just for the color.
"Yours looks good," Zara said. She added chives to her box too, but not the chili flakes because she hated spicy foods.
We did it! We really, really did it!
Wow, if I knew cooking was so exciting, I would have joined the cooking club.
"Goodness! If I knew you girls were so bad, I would have sent all of you to woodwork class!" Mrs. Martinez concluded. "Half of you should never be allowed near a stove!"
So at least half of us were destined to become beautiful women by Marcus' mum's definition.