How Did I Pass Home Economics?

Laurin Evans and I have a friendly dispute going on over who started stalking who first. We’ve settled on the conclusion that she read my blog first and I sent the first email. She lives about two miles away from me, which is awesome. I mean, how often do you stumble on a random bloggy friend who happens to live in the same zip code?

Since Laurin’s a recovering lawyer and is, in general, far more stylish and savvy than I am, she has all sorts of professional lady contacts in the city. She started bringing me along to some networking event-type things. They ended up being surprisingly fun. Possibly because of wine. Also because I get to stand up and introduce myself as, “Hi, I have a blog. Also I write for a website called Aiming Low. No—not Amy Lo—Aiming Low. Like, Aiming…Low. Yes. Yeah. It’s funny? Um, basically it’s about how we suck. Please hire me to write your marketing copy!”

Good times.

At one of these networking events last year, I met Jaden Hair. Laurin was all, “That’s Steamy Kitchen. She does the cooking segments on the news and has a food blog?” And I was like, “Ugh, I need to pay more attention to the Internet and also everything ever.”

Jaden was super nice and gorgeous and down to earth and later I went looking for her on Twitter and I was like, “Oh holy crap she’s super famous.” I’m glad I didn’t know that when I met her ’cause I would have been an even bigger spaz than I normally am when I meet strangers.

The other day my husband and I went over to Jaden’s to eat some oysters. She had like four million of them and couldn’t eat them all herself. We brought the kids along and thankfully her boys and my big boy got along and the baby remained surprisingly chill, so I had time to learn to shuck an oyster. Surprisingly, no one died. Because dude? Oyster shucking involves using a knife to pry open a mollusk.

Let’s just say my son inherited his ability to slam his own head in doors from his mama. And people should probably not give his mama knives.

I was kind of thinking that exact thing when the extremely talented Jaden was like, “Can you cut those tomatoes and that lettuce for the burgers?”

I went into her gorgeous kitchen and picked up the coolest knife I’ve ever held and eyed the vegetables and thought, “This right here? This pretty much epitomizes aiming low.” Because guys? I HAVE NEVER CUT LETTUCE BEFORE. I was all, “Sure thing, lemme get right on this!” OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO CUT MY HAND OFF.

Spoiler: I didn’t cut my hand off.

But the lettuce for the burgers ended up getting re-purposed as a salad.

Tagged as: home ec FAIL