Clueless in the kitchen

My husband thinks he can find his way around the kitchen and figure out a recipe. But this is proof that he may not know exactly what he's doing. Keep in mind that while he's trying to make clam chowder from a recipe we got from a local restaurant that I'm upstairs at the computer.

"Can this go in the oven?"

Husband asks me this, standing at the bottom of the stairs holding up a measuring cup.

Me: "No, it can't. Put it in a oven proof dish."

He goes back to the kitchen.

Him: "What dish should I use?"

Me: "An oven proof, like I cook Crazy Cake in." I'm trying avoid interrupting what I'm doing to go downstairs to find him an oven proof dish.

Him: "Can I use this white round dish?" He's in the kitchen, yelling to me upstairs.

Me: "Yes that will work."

A few minutes later:

Him: "What's a sauce pan?"

Me: "It's not a frying pan." I figured that by the process of elimination and from the fact that he knew what a frying pan was, he could figure which pan would be a sauce pan.

I hear him rattling around in the kitchen for awhile. But since he hadn't asked me any more questions about equipment or the recipe, I decided all was well.

When I finally get downstairs, I discovered the "sauce pan" he was using was actually the dutch oven - too big for what he was doing. He was about ready to add the flour and butter mixture to the cut up vegetables in the dutch oven without adding any liquid. If you don't do a lot of cooking, you may not know that a flour and butter mixture is called "roux" and is used to thicken liquids (soup, gravy, etc.). I took over at this point.

I know he means well and thinks that he knows what he's doing, but next time, I think I will just assign him the cleaning up process. I know he can handle that.

P.S. The chowder was great. Yum...