The One Where I Earned My Nickname

One of my best friends in the whole world has a nickname for me that has stuck with me since my freshman year of college. I take that back, I earned the nickname my freshman year, but it was not given to me until my sophomore year when I revealed my secret to her. Here's the story.

I've never been a great cook. In fact, I've never had an interest in cooking. My idea of cooking tends to be based on the "what can I toss in the microwave" philosophy over the "what ingredients do I have that go together that can be placed in an oven" philosophy.

One day after softball practice, I decided that I wanted a poptart. I know that you can eat them without heating them in a toaster, but I wanted my smores poptart to be ooey and gooey. My roommate and I did not have a toaster, so I decided that I would just pop it in the microwave.

There are microwave instructions on the box. I can't screw that up, right?

Wrong.

I took the poptart out of the box and tossed it in the microwave. Instead of the 10 seconds that the instructions told me to heat it, I set the microwave for 1 minute. (Have you noticed the step I forgot yet?)

After about 20 seconds, sparks begin flying from the microwave. I rush over to shut it off, and see a flaming poptart. Guess who forgot to take the poptart out of the foil wrapper.

In an effort to not have everyone on my floor know that I'm a complete culinary idiot, I did what any freshman would do. I put out the fire, praying the smoke alarm wouldn't go off, and then began my walk around the floor.

Once I had successfully made it to the complete opposite side of the floor, I tossed the poptart in the trashcan and continued the lap back to my dorm room.

Everyone on that hall was wondering what the awful smell was, and my roommate and I never revealed my secret. (She's awesome like that.) Towards the end of my sophomore year, I was telling one of my best friends who lived on the hall where I tossed the evidence, and after laughing so hard that I thought she would get sick, she nicknamed me Betty Crocker.

Betty Crocker has stuck with me to this day. There are a few dishes that I can make that would be referred to as "real cooking". For the most part, I tend to steer towards the grownup version of the microwave, the crockpot, to handle the cooking needs for my family.

And I've never placed a poptart in the microwave since. Lesson learned.