Q: What is this round, fairly deep cooking vessel?
A: A pot.

Q: Pot? Can I get arrested for holding it?
A: I'd have to check the case law, but I'm pretty sure it's legal, unless you try to hide your stash in it.

Q: What can you do with a pot?
A: You put things in it.

Q: Like your head? Look! I'm wearing a pot for hat! I'm a pothead. Get it?
A: Give me that pot. We're going to start with something very simple. We're going to put water in the pot.

Q: You can cook water? What ingredients do we need to make water? I know all about using my masculine foraging abilities to acquire ingredients from the previous lesson.
A: You get water from the faucet.

Q: Oh. I thought we were cooking some kind of gourmet water du jour.
A: Idiot.

Q: Look, just because I look beefy and masculine on the outside doesn't mean I'm not squishy and tender on the inside. It doesn't mean I don't have feelings and... stuff.
A: Huh?

Q: All I'm saying is you shouldn't call me an idiot. I'm really trying to learn here.
A: Okay. Sorry. Why don't you put some water in the pot?

Q: How much water?
A: Put in two cups.

Q: Okay. One of them floats.
A: What?

Q: One of the cups is floating. It's made of plastic. The other one is a teacup. It sank.
A: We should probably start over. A "cup" is a unit of measurement. When you put "a cup of water" into the pot, you don't actually put a cup in the pot.

Q: Huh?
A: Think of it like a handful. Except it's a cupful.

Q: That makes sense. It's very difficult to hold water in your hand. What size of cup should I use? Cup size. Get it? I said cup size.
A: Yes. I get it. Use a measuring cup. It's a standard unit.

Q: Measuring cup? That doesn't sound very masculine. I'll use this Big Gulp cup. Two of them?
A: Why don't you use half of a Nalgene instead?

Q: That's not a cup.
A: A 1-quart Nalgene holds 2 pints or 4 cups or 32 fluid ounces or 64 tablespoons or 192 teaspoons... thus, half a Nalgene is two 8-ounce cups.

Q: I feel much more comfortable when I measure using backpacking equipment.
A: We'll make a cook of you yet.

Q: What should I do with this pot of water?
A: We're going to boil it.

Q: Is this to kill the bacteria so we don’t get giardia?
A: No. The water here is actually okay to drink straight from the faucet. We're going to boil this water to make pasta.

Q: How long should I microwave this pot?
A: No! Do not microwave that pot. If you microwave metal things it they will catch on fire.

Q: Sweet! I'm going to do it!
A: No! No! Not again...