adjusting to life as a stay at home wife: Vegetable Mutilation and Lewd Fruit

Last night we had the second part of our Thai cooking course. Sam had been complaining about it for ages "who pays 15e to cut up vegetable??" and the concept in general "cutting up vegetables... ha!" I mean this had been going on for quite some time and every time I brought up the topic he would go on complaining. So, you could say that we were having some serious motivational problems (he even tried to make us late!) However, his attitude towards knives and vegetables was all about to change.

Carrot flowers and cucumber thing.

Sam ended up being the only guy and we ended up being the youngest ones (again!) but that didn't matter much, it's the results that count, right? And it wasn't that bad, at least it wasn't like a senior cruise. I mean most of the people there were in their thirties I would guess. But some were already into the whole vegetable decoration scene. This one lady brought her own knife... hmmm... which I was soon to realize wasn't such a bad idea.

Onion flowers

There are a few essential things that you need when making decorations with fruit and veg: 1. a good knife 2. a good vegetable (well shaped, not too raw and not too ripe) 3. patience. Of those three I swear I had none! My knife was sucky, at least when I was using it. It was blunt and would NEVER cut the way I wanted it to. I always picked the wrong vegetable/fruit. It was either too long or small or fat or just too darn squishy! And the one thing I just do NOT have, as regards to any aspect of life, is PATIENCE. I mean I want things done! I don't want to gently grate at a carrot for 15 minutes. I want to slice and dice right NOW! Heh. So, you can imagine what my creations looked like. Sam on the other hand is good at making little things with his hands and he has admirable amounts of patience. And it was truly visible in our work.

Sam's onion flower

My onion thing

Sam's root flower

My root flower (held together by toothpicks)

Sam's watermelon rose

There is no picture available for my watermelon rose because I ate it. I tried. I really did! I thought I got the center right, it was round, I guess. Then I started the petals and it all went down hill from there. I made two petals and looked at the thing and it looked like... well... part of the female anatomy. It really did! I tried to fix it. I cut at the lewd flesh of the mocking fruit. And I couldn't fix it! No matter what I did I could not erase the obvious genitalia from my watermelon! But it got worse! Sam's laughter brought the teacher over to see how we were getting along. Oh the humiliation of handing her my watermelon vagina! She observed it for a while and then judging by her expression she caught on. She cut a few pieces off and handed it back to me. Even though it looked much more like a flower I was still angry at the stupid fruit so I sulkily ate the darn thing. I'm sure you could make some Freudian assumptions on this but please don't.