Two Cooks and a Skillet of Noodles

by Bonnie Afman Emmorey

It is bad to suppress your laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips.

Fred Allen

Being the fourth daughter born in the Afman household had one big advantage. I never had to learn how to cook. If Mother was gone, one of my older sisters took over the meal preparation.

After our sisters Carol and Jennie left for college, Paula and I became the oldest of four children still living at home. Our mother soon realized there was a problem. Paula is just eighteen months older than I am, and she hadn’t learned how to cook either. I was a junior in high school, and Paula was a freshman in college. By this time Mother didn’t have much hope that a crash course in home economics would help us.

It was the seventies—long before there was a microwave oven in every kitchen. Mother kept a stash of pot pies in the freezer for us. If we came home and found ourselves on our own, we would just pop a pie in the oven and we had dinner.

One summer day Paula and I arrived home after working all day, and no one else was there. No problem. I flipped on the switch to preheat the oven and left the room to change my clothes. Paula and I were back in the kitchen about a half hour later, ready to put in the pot pies—but we discovered a problem. Mom had left two pounds of ground beef in the oven to thaw.

We had a dilemma! The meat was already half-cooked, and we knew Mother wouldn’t be happy if it was wasted, so we decided to make something out of it. We scrounged through the cupboards and found a box of Hamburger Helper. Surely this box would solve our problem.

Paula got out the electric skillet and finished cooking the meat while I prepared to mix in the remaining ingredients. I was a little concerned because the mix called for one pound of meat and we had two, but Paula assured me that we could make it work.

Once everything was in the pan, we weren’t too sure. Our concoction didn’t look very appetizing. The box said we were making goulash, but there was way too much meat. We knew we’d have to add more ingredients. Paula suggested it needed more color, so she added a whole quart of Mother’s canned tomatoes. I thought it needed more noodles to balance out all the tomatoes, so I found a box of elbow macaroni and dumped that into the mixture. We replaced the lid and prayed for a miracle.

A few minutes later, something odd happened. Our makeshift dinner was oozing out from under the lid and running down the side of the pan. When Paula lifted the cover, our creation poured out. The original mixture had doubled in size and was continuing to grow. The noodles were expanding—getting bigger and bigger! Our concoction was running off the stove and down onto the floor. We were in trouble—and we knew it.

At that moment Mother and Dad came in the door. Paula and I were trying not to fall on the slippery noodles now spread across the floor and trying to keep some of our dinner in the pan. But it kept coming and coming. We soon realized our situation was out of control. Even Mother recognized the humor of the moment, and we stood there in the middle of those slimy noodles and laughed out loud. Here we were—two grown women—and we couldn’t even make Hamburger Helper!

It soon occurred to us that we hadn’t read the directions. Who knew that noodles had to be cooked before they were added to the other ingredients? Even Mother couldn’t save our creation. It was beyond hope! We tried giving it to the dog, but even she turned her nose up at it. After cleaning up the awful mess, our whole family ate pot pies. Paula and I are both grown now, and we did eventually learn how to cook. However, we still break into a sweat when we see a box of Hamburger Helper. And we often find ourselves laughing uncontrollably when we watch noodles expand in hot water. Together we discovered that following directions is an important part of life.

Those who listen to instruction will prosper; Those who trust the Lord will be joyful.

Proverbs 16:20 NLT