Here is a picture of my hands holding something I made. Can you see it? It is an uncooked dumpling. But it will be cooked! Ok, I admit that for the cooking part, my beloved husband, the accomplished, kick booty cook will have to step in. He is the one who is destined to make that thing edible. But still, I did the preparation part. And unless you are very, very strict with your categories, preparation, my fellow non-cooks, is cooking

The Non-Cook Manifesto
Eighth Installment

WORKING DEFINITION OF THE TERM NON-COOK  
A non-cook is a person who does not think of herself or himself as a cook.

THE COOKING NON-COOK
or
DON'T LET ANY ONE TELL YOU WHAT YOU 
CAN AND CANNOT DO BASED ON WHO YOU ARE

So I, personally, am proceeding as a proud, confirmed non-cook.  Forget about the embarrassment re: being lame in the kitchen. I am continuing as a non-cook who sometimes lays low with combo can’t and won’t non-cook style but sometimes chooses to cook:  The transformer non-cook who morphs into cooking mode at will, quality of the results notwithstanding! 

Some might say: What is the non-cook doing cooking at all? Isn’t the non-cook supposed to be not cooking?  To this I must respond, no. No, no, and no.  

The non-cook may certainly cook! The non-cook may cook with reckless abandon, making weird ingredient substitutions and grossing her family out with cooking basics totally ignored. 

The non-cook may be perfectly hopeless, it’s true. Hopeless in terms of ever being able to or willing to cook. But then again, he may be capable of multiple possibilities, of a renewed intention, of following recipes.  Or anyway capable of periodic bouts of trying to cook actual things. The non-cook has potential. The non-cook may change her mind about how she spends her time, if not who she is.

Listen, cooks don’t have sole propriety over the kitchen.  So move over.  I’m going to get in that kitchen and mess up a quiche, under-bake a birthday cake, and come up with something almost completely inedible to carry to a potluck dinner. Because the non-cook has a perfect right to participate, even if she doesn’t  want to.