The Surprise You Get When You Look Up “How Do I Thaw Frozen Spinach?”

I made this baked ziti with spinach. 

I didn't die. 

I didn't get sick. 

This, at the moment, is my measurement of culinary success. 

It was tasty. I recommend it.

But I'm not here to post a recipe. This is about a certain step in the recipe that will demonstrate WHY I get so frustrated with cooking. So you're going to hear all about my frustration and maybe learn something along with me.

First, here is my big issue with recipes in general. This particular recipe, in theory, should have taken me 15 minutes of prep and then a half hour of cooking, so we're talking 45 minutes.

BUT IT NEVER WORKS THAT WAY. 

Why? 

Because I am an idiot and don't know what I'm doing. They should include TWO times: the one for people who have a clue about cooking and the one for the rest of us who need to read the recipe ten zillion times, have a nervous breakdown, and google steps within the recipe in order to figure things out. The googling takes time, people. Even if you don't fall down a rabbit hole, the googling takes time. 

Here's a perfect example from this recipe. You have to use a 10 ounce package of frozen spinach, thawed. Okay, sounds simple, right? Frozen spinach. That's supposed to make life easier. But then I thought about it and was like "Hmm. Do I know how to thaw frozen spinach? Let's make sure I'm clear on that."

It was already noon. I was heading out to buy a package of frozen spinach. Would it be thawed by five or six if I just left it out? 

Well, yes. Probably. But! Thawing it isn't enough. Apparently, you need to do this thing with frozen spinach. You have to squeeze it. To get out the excess water. It makes perfect sense in hindsight, but I NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS would have figured that out on my own.

Just so you know: I picked the coldest night of the year to do this activity (seriously: schools delayed their openings the next morning). 

Luckily, this lovely YouTube lady decided to make a video of herself squeezing spinach. 

#funonasaturdaynight 

WATCH AND LEARN, CLUELESS COOKS. WATCH AND LEARN. 

And now for a bit of dialogue from that time I squeezed the spinach:

"All right, we're squeezing the spinach. Okay. Yep, there's a lot of water content here, so I understand the reason why, but the recipe should have stated you have to squeeze and thaw your spinach. It said the thaw part. It didn't say anything about squeezing. Maybe it wants extra water content. I don't know these things. These are the things I don't know and I have questions about. Okay. The middle is still kind of ... We'll find out won't we? That's the thing, so now one little thing could possibly ruin this recipe. Is it going to ruin the recipe if this is like a little bit not completely thawed? It's not completely frozen. I'm able to squeeze it but, it's cold. It's cold, motherfucker. All right, I just swore. That's going to happen more because I'm cooking and that's just going to happen. All right, I'm squeezing the spinach. I have preheated the oven. I have not started the pasta yet, because you know what? All the other things take so long for me to do, the pasta will just take like eight minutes so, really, that's why I haven't started the pasta. I'm just squeezing my spinach, which could be a metaphor for I don't know what. Euphemism, you figure it out. Oh, the person transcribing this is going to have fun. Hi. All right, I think I've ... Yep, I think that's good enough. We're going to find out. It's not going to kill me, it's just going to make it soupy, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. These are the things that I just don't know." 

YOU'RE WELCOME.