Can you cook?

From as far back as I can recall, I have always answered the question, "Can you cook?" with an unwavering response: Nope. Most of the time, this was accompanied by a sad little shake of the head and downcast eyes: my way of apologizing for somehow having given them the wrong impression of me and my culinary abilities. Part of the misunderstanding might stem from the fact that I like to eat. A lot. Although it's important to consider the quality of the food being eaten, what I'm generally after is quantity. I rarely eat less than two servings during a meal, and have been known to devour an entire plate of unattended cookies with such devotion and fervor that people sitting nearby are often left wondering what the cookies ever did to me.
Honestly though, I don't think my enthusiasm for eating is so unreasonable. I've heard of bodybuilders who eat something like 13 steaks in the course of a single day. Then again, those guys are probably twice my size and work out for maybe 6 hours a day, so we know where that food is going. Regardless, when I eat two plates of spaghetti, the experience is generally enjoyable, and the food somehow goes to good, healthy use (I've been the exact same weight since sophomore year of high school).
Because of my obvious enthusiasm for food, some people assume that I know how to cook and, as I said earlier, I've always been a disappointment in that category. Until now, I guess.
In the past year or so, I've started trying to put together meals which are a) satisfying, b) plentiful and, c) relatively inexpensive. Understandably, I began with pasta. Don't misunderstand me here, I'm not saying that I make the pasta from scratch or can my own red sauce. It seemed wiser to start with something that works (dried whole wheat pasta, premade sauce in a jar) and start adding to it. Initially, you might have seen me standing in the kitchen with a zuchini in one hand, a dull knife in the other, and a look of complete bewilderment on my face. It's one thing to microwave a potato, but this was something else. I knew that I was entering a strange and potentially dangerous new world, and there wasn't any turning back. Even then, I realized that I was crossing a point of no return. Whatever lessons I learned (be it from disaster or success) couldn't be unlearned.
And so I added more and different vegetables, experimented with spices, and even tried baking a thing or two. I remember the night that I called my mother to ask her for her lasagna recipe. "My what?", she asked. "Lasagna? You know that has to be cooked, right?". After I convinced her that I knew where the fire extinquisher was, she told me the necessary steps and wished me good luck. The next day, I called her after eating four pieces of lasagna to tell her of my success and that she didn't need to worry about me anymore: I could cook. Realizing that I wasn't in any obvious gastrointestinal distress, she packed up and went to Cuba. I guess she figured, "The boy can feed himself. I'm going on vacation."
Today, I achieved something which was no less remarkable than the lasagna success (except that I had no idea where the fire extinguisher was): I made cookies, by myself, from scratch. Okay, so maybe that last part isn't exactly true. I didn't grind the flour or churn the butter, but I did combine all the correct ingredients in the proper order, and finished it off by baking them all to damn-near perfection. As a kid, it was always my job to lick every piece of utensil and equipment before placing it in the sink to be washed. I thought mine was an important task, but upon reflection it occurs to me that this was simply my mother's way of keeping me out of the way. It was a clever diversion because a) there was no way I was going to let any of that sweet, gooey heaven go to waste and, b)there was a certain incident when I, as a young child, decided to confirm whether or not the stove top was in fact hot by placing my hand on the glowing red coil. So really, she was acting on previous experience in order to protect me and the cookies at the same time.
As I did after the Lasagna Challenge, I called my mother to boast of my latest success in the kitchen, this time with cookies. Again she congratulated me, but this time distractedly. I think she was looking up plane tickets.