Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Leave Cooking to the Professionals

When I was seven I admired my brother. He had a job. He worked at McDonald’s and even made enough money to buy our neighbor’s green Ford Pinto (the Green Bean) for a whopping $300. The best part about his job, however, wasn’t the sweet wheels and the Miami-Vice-like lifestyle, but the myriad skills he acquired.

Each day he would grace us with new facts about his new world and his accomplishments. He was a sort of Fast Food Boy Scout, if you will, eager to show off his merit badges.

I remember with fondness his instruction of how to correctly cook fries. They were perfect in every way; and often in my life, I wondered if McDonald’s new that he divulged their recipe if they could charge back his old paychecks.

Mom’s fries were good, but let’s be honest—she was an amateur. While she was an excellent cook, her fries never made her enough money to buy a new car.

Today’s Tip: Let the professionals do the cooking.

Why make mom slave over a Superbowl dinner that looks nice, but just makes a mess no one wants to clean. The people at Swanson’s are paid professionals. Their life goal is to create culinary masterpieces like the cherry pie on the Turkey Hungry Man TV dinner.

It doesn’t matter where you work, everyone has talked to that customer who is a lawyer and can sue you, or works at the bank so they know how a credit card works. And when these people talk…of course you LISTEN.

Regardless of how many kids mom has raised, she doesn’t have the life-experience that the chef’s at Dairy Queen have. And let’s not forget the highly trained Sandwich Artist of Subway. How much training does your mom have at making sandwiches? In the end, hers is just a cheap imitation.

If you want food done the right way, get it from the people who know it best. And next time show Maria some respect at the drive-thru window…she’s a professional.

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