Kayleigh Hudson - London Foiled Again

 

So, my mom is a great cook. That was kind of wasted on us as kids when we insisted on a diet of frozen fish sticks, chicken nuggets and peanut butter on taco shells. But as I got older in high school and freshman year of college and I expanded my palate to include vegetables and meat that did not come from a microwave, I realized this woman can cook. And so, sophomore year of college, I go back down to school in South Carolina and I move into an apartment with two of my girlfriends I met freshman year. 

 

And so, we just think like it's just so cool, like my first time not living at my parents’ house or in a dorm and we have a kitchen. And I decided, “You know what? I’m going to cook a meal for some of our friends that we haven't seen all summer as a welcome back kickoff to sophomore year.” I had never cooked a meal before that did not involve boiling water first, and pasta and cheese. Those are the only ingredients I really worked with. I was a freshman in college before that. And so, I invite them over and I was like, “What am I going to make?” Okay, well, my mom makes a really one of my favorite things is a London broil. I was like, “Okay, I'm going to make a London broil.” Okay. So, I call mom, I'm like, “I need to know exactly how you do this.” And she told me and I followed it to a T. 

 

I invited people over on Saturday night. Friday, it spent all day marinating in the fridge and then Saturday morning, it goes in, start cooking all day. And then, I just cleaned up and I timed, I had salad, I had sides. I googled. I had a green thing and something else too, I'm sure. [audience laughter] I had a dessert. I had everything. And I'm just like, “All right, yeah, I'm totally my mother's child. Even though I look, act, talk and everything else like my dad, I got this for my mom.” 

 

And I time everything to end right as people get there too. So, I'm thinking like, I'm hot stuff right now. So, people come over and I'm like, “Oh, welcome. Oh, I'm just finishing up a few things.” I invite them over to come look as I reveal this beautifully cooked London broil, the main entree. I have them gather around, and we go and I pull it out, and in front of us is an uncooked, raw, now room temperature slab of meat. [audience laughter] Not cooked one bit. 

 

So, we all sit there and we stare for a few seconds. And then, finally, Caroline, sweet, sweet Caroline says to me as gently as she can, I'm in South Carolina, so I'll put on the accent a little bit, as gently as she can to me. She goes, “Well, Kayleigh, why did you try to cook it in the drawer?” [audience laughter] I tell her very matter of factly, “Oh, no, that's a broiler.” Someone else chimes in and is like, “No, that's just the drawer where you store the pans.” [audience laughter] And I'm like, “Oh, okay, I've got some dummies for friends. I'll educate someone else now.” “No, yeah, you keep your pans in there when you're not using it as a broiler.” Well, eventually I got-- 

 

There's some education that happens on my part. I learned some ovens, that's just a drawer. [audience laughter] But in my defense, I grew up my mom's oven, the only one I'd ever really dealt with until this point, was that was a broiler. That's where you put the raw London broil in. You take a cooked one out at the end of the day. [audience laughter] So, luckily, just a few days before, we had met our cute neighbors, who has cute next-door neighbors, sophomore year of college. And so, one of them had gone to culinary school. So, of course, I'm like, “I get to go see the cute neighbors.” Okay, I have to ask for help though in the kitchen. 

 

So, I walk over there and it's like, “Oh, hey, I don't remember me. Yeah, my friend tried to make a London broil in our oven [audience laughter] and I wasn't paying attention and didn't have a chance to tell her like that's a drawer.” [audience laughter] So, that didn't hold very long. He was very quickly brought-- The truth came out very quickly. But he came over, saved the day. So, we had a great little entree of something green, probably broccoli and maybe some celery, who knows? And dessert and everything. And then, we had our entree later. He did save the day. 

 

I have maybe tried to cook two real meals since. I'm going to be real talk right now. This happened like 11 years ago, 12 years ago. [audience laughter] But you would think the most embarrassing part would be that I spent a whole day-- I had a whole day where I thought I was cooking a London broil in a drawer. [audience laughter] But really, honestly, the part that was the hardest to come clean to my friends about was I told them, “Y'all, about halfway through the cook time for hours in, per my mom's instructions that I followed, I opened it up and I flipped it over.” [audience laughter] No idea. Thank you.