Easy things you suck at doing

[Argus Skyhawk]

Calculus, math so easy a child could do it...

There's a statement you don't hear every day.

 

[siskokid888]

I suck at any type of "handyman" crap - home repair, car repair, anything like that. Not good with tools. Kinda weird as I have always been a decent athlete, and some of the skill sets are the same, but I always manage to screw up a simple repair job.

 

[LitmusDragon]

Put me in the "can't whistle" camp.

I'm terrible at depth perception, but that's probably because I'm massively nearsighted. Even with glasses I can "see" well enough but any distance furthur than about 3 feet away I have a hard time judging. I can drive well enough on the interstate but I like to avoid curvy roads wherever possible.

I'm terrible at cleaning. I eventually had to hire a cleaning service to come every two weeks. I swear I can spend two or three hours dusting and vacuuming and the next day it will look just as bad as if I'd never done it.

I have yet to find a chicken recipe I can prepare adequetely. Pork and beef are easy, chicken is hard.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

I have yet to find a chicken recipe I can prepare adequetely. Pork and beef are easy, chicken is hard.

That's okay. That's what the Colonel is for.

 

[John Picard]

Those are the most unspecific directions I've ever heard for baking a potato.

OK, how about this:
1. Select your potato and give it a good scrubbing, preferably with a brush, but with your hands is fine so long as you're thorough.
2. Poke it several times with a fork, all around the potato. This is to let the steam out so that the potato gets nice and fluffy inside.
3. Smear it with a little bit of cooking oil - olive, canola, corn, doesn't matter so long as it's edible. This will give you a slightly crispy skin, and it also conducts heat into the potato a little more quickly.
4. Put it in a pan or on a baking sheet. If desired, sprinkle it with some salt or garlic salt.
5. Put it in a 350-400 degree oven.
6. Bake for, oh...an hour or so. The bigger the potato, the longer it will take. Regular-size potatoes only take about 45 minutes in my oven, but I have a convection oven. A great big potato in a conventional oven might take 1:15 or so.
7. If you can squeeze it with your (dish towel or potholder protected) hand and it feels nice and soft inside, it's done.

Do not wrap it in foil - it'll turn out gummy.

Too specific?

Ooooh, thanks for the tip. I buy my potatoes from the local natural food market and have been eating them at an average of two per week with my dinner. This should add some pizzaz.

 

[JustKate]

^ You are welcome.

I have lots of potato recipes because I love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. How anybody managed to stick to Adkins or another one of those carbohydrates-are-evil diets is an absolute mystery to me.

 

[TheSeeker]

As others have mentioned, I cannot whistle using the fingers in mouth technique. I also can't raise just one eyebrow at a time.

 

[John Picard]

As others have mentioned, I cannot whistle using the fingers in mouth technique. I also can't raise just one eyebrow at a time.

I bet that eyebrow trick is like rolling your tongue -- it's a specific gene that has to be inherited.

 

[Lindley]

I can do only my right eyebrow. Not the left one.

Took me a while to figure even that out, but eventually I got it.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I can't bake a pretty cake.

But it's a piece of cake to do so. You just have to cook it by the book.

 

[StarshipDefiant]

I cannot whistle very good (at all really)
I can raise my left, but not my right eyebrow
I can't seem to cook a good batch of pasta without someone helping me watch it, no idea why, I can do eggs, a steak, burgers, but not pasta...

Technical stuff, I tend to love it, but I cannot do certain things, upgrade things, secure it, read and understand manuals and instructions. Bah.

 

[Captain Ice]

Those are the most unspecific directions I've ever heard for baking a potato.

OK, how about this:
1. Select your potato and give it a good scrubbing, preferably with a brush, but with your hands is fine so long as you're thorough.
2. Poke it several times with a fork, all around the potato. This is to let the steam out so that the potato gets nice and fluffy inside.
3. Smear it with a little bit of cooking oil - olive, canola, corn, doesn't matter so long as it's edible. This will give you a slightly crispy skin, and it also conducts heat into the potato a little more quickly.
4. Put it in a pan or on a baking sheet. If desired, sprinkle it with some salt or garlic salt.
5. Put it in a 350-400 degree oven.
6. Bake for, oh...an hour or so. The bigger the potato, the longer it will take. Regular-size potatoes only take about 45 minutes in my oven, but I have a convection oven. A great big potato in a conventional oven might take 1:15 or so.
7. If you can squeeze it with your (dish towel or potholder protected) hand and it feels nice and soft inside, it's done.

Do not wrap it in foil - it'll turn out gummy.

Too specific?

Totally agreed except for the last part. Wrapping in foil keeps the skin from drying out and getting hard.

Justkate, I don't know what I'm doing differently, but I've never had a foil wrapped potato turn out gummy.

 

[JustKate]

^ Ooh, but I love the slightly crunchy skin - different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I do consider the texture of a potato that has been cooked in foil "gummy," but maybe we just have different definitions of "gummy," Rudolph. The problem with foil is that it keeps all the moisture trapped inside. What you want is to let some of it escape as steam (that's also why you poke the potato with a fork), making your potato fluffier.

If you don't like the slightly crunch skin (although the thought of this just breaks my heart ), I'd still recommend baking it part of the time with the foil at least cracked open so that some of the moisture can escape. But maybe that's just me.

Edit: Sorry for the cooking diversion, everybody. Have I mentioned that cooking is one of my favorite things to do?

 

[John Picard]

^ Ooh, but I love the slightly crunchy skin - different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I do consider the texture of a potato that has been cooked in foil "gummy," but maybe we just have different definitions of "gummy," Rudolph. The problem with foil is that it keeps all the moisture trapped inside. What you want is to let some of it escape as steam (that's also why you poke the potato with a fork), making your potato fluffier.

If you don't like the slightly crunch skin (although the thought of this just breaks my heart ), I'd still recommend baking it part of the time with the foil at least cracked open so that some of the moisture can escape. But maybe that's just me.

Edit: Sorry for the cooking diversion, everybody. Have I mentioned that cooking is one of my favorite things to do?

Don't completely seal the potato in the foil. Wrap it in such a manner as to vent the steam out of the top of the foil apparatus.

Perhaps we should post pictures of Before/After baking potatoes and compare results? I'm game!

 

[StarshipDefiant]

^ Ooh, but I love the slightly crunchy skin - different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I do consider the texture of a potato that has been cooked in foil "gummy," but maybe we just have different definitions of "gummy," Rudolph. The problem with foil is that it keeps all the moisture trapped inside. What you want is to let some of it escape as steam (that's also why you poke the potato with a fork), making your potato fluffier.

If you don't like the slightly crunch skin (although the thought of this just breaks my heart ), I'd still recommend baking it part of the time with the foil at least cracked open so that some of the moisture can escape. But maybe that's just me.

Edit: Sorry for the cooking diversion, everybody. Have I mentioned that cooking is one of my favorite things to do?

It's alright, cooking can be good, especially if the people that eat it, end up liking it.

Writing...or rather, planning a story out and being able to write it out, I just...can't seem to do it.

 

[Captain Shaw]

I don't like Potatoes that have been cooked in a oven i liked mine nuked in the microwave smothered in lots of butter.

 

[JustKate]

^ Euw. I still respect you as a person, Serial, but I have lost some respect for your palate. Nuked potatoes are nasty. If I'm in a huge hurry, I will sometimes nuke them, but I always put them in a real oven for at least a few minutes at the very end of cooking.

 

[Kestra]

As others have mentioned, I cannot whistle using the fingers in mouth technique. I also can't raise just one eyebrow at a time.

I bet that eyebrow trick is like rolling your tongue -- it's a specific gene that has to be inherited.

I'm not so sure about that. I've found that many people who believe they cannot raise one eyebrow at a time simply haven't practiced enough. I think it's a muscle movement that needs to be learned. This is based on nothing but my own experience, of course. I can raise each eyebrow separately but I don't consider that an easy thing.

 

[JustKate]

^ My mother trained herself to raise her eyebrow - she says as a child she just practiced and practiced. I'm not sure why, but it is pretty cool, I have to say. One of my sisters could do it the first time she tried, though. Oddly enough, she's the sibling who looks most like my mother, though I'm sure that's just coincidence.

 

[Captain Ice]

Don't completely seal the potato in the foil. Wrap it in such a manner as to vent the steam out of the top of the foil apparatus.

Perhaps we should post pictures of Before/After baking potatoes and compare results? I'm game!

That's the difference then. My potatoes are fairly loosely wrapped in the foil.

And I'm game...

It's alright, cooking can be good, especially if the people that eat it, end up liking it.

Writing...or rather, planning a story out and being able to write it out, I just...can't seem to do it.

Same here. I usually consider my stories absolute crap, and so won't let them be read by anyone else. I think I've only got two up on the web right now.

As for cooking, I think the secret is that you have to be at least indifferent to it. If you actively hate it, you won't put forth the effort to learn. Or experiment with it for that matter.

I actually enjoy cooking, but cannot stand to do it more than a couple of times a week. Cooking is quite fun, especially when I start experimenting with additions/subtractions to a recipe.

Nuked potatoes are nasty. If I'm in a huge hurry, I will sometimes nuke them, but I always put them in a real oven for at least a few minutes at the very end of cooking.

x2

If I'm in a hurry, I'll usually just make rice instead.