Not just Top Ramen...

Pearls of wisdom I have gained from living with a chef:

Slice back and forth, do not chop. Chopping gives a girl a dull blade.
Chef’s have special band-aids. They are blue. The blue makes them easy to find when they fall into the food.

Let’s all take a moment to shudder after that last one.

Cookies don’t cook right if you’re too impatient to wait for the oven to heat up. Patience is rewarded, fatty!
Any recipe that calls for “crushed corn flakes” or “mini marshmallows” will not be taken seriously. (Thus voiding the legitimacy of roughly 87% of all the recipes protected and cherished by my extended family.)
Butter really is better.
I now know what the following terms and jargon mean: amuse bouche, stodge, 86’d, frisee, torchon, in the weeds, mise en place. Granted, you can learn and hear these words by watching Top Chef or reading No Reservations. However—who actually gets to use them in daily conversation? That’d be me!
When mixing large quantities, use your hands. It’s way more affective, AND fun.
Reducing a recipe that makes 15 dozen sugar cookies in a recipe that makes ‘just enough cookies for a small family gathering’ takes MAJOR math skills. And perhaps a metric converter application for your iPhone.

I would like to thank Mr. Cook for giving me all the tools to decipher an episode of Top Chef, order off an impossible menu, and keep the crushed cornflakes out of my recipes.

Sorry, Kelloggs.