Teaching a Bachelor How to Cook Made Me Feel Smart

To teach is to learn twice

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My 30-something bachelor friend Geoff recently bought his first house. His newfound homeowner status stirred up his desire to cook.

Geoff is in my small group from church, which meets every Friday. So I’d heard several times about how Geoff wanted to learn to cook. He’d even asked for prayer about it.

If someone asks for prayer and it’s something good or at least reasonable, I’ll do whatever is in my power to help it happen. So I offered to teach Geoff how to cook.

He was receptive to the idea. We talked about what he wanted to cook, and we agreed on a time, recipes, and shopping list.

The cooking lesson was fun, and Geoff appreciated the one-on-one attention. Since he knew next to nothing about cooking, I felt like a culinary wizard, and I was inspired to do some more cooking for myself.

Lessons I learned

If I do something like this again, though, I’ll make some changes. Here are a few that spring to mind:

Don’t get too ambitious

Our main dish was fried rice. I’d never made fried rice from a recipe before, but I wanted to learn, and so did Geoff.