Kitchen Adventures, Part Four

Have I mentioned that I am not well-suited for the kitchen?

I'm not. I can do peanut butter and jelly sammiches(now with MORE jelly!) pretty awesome, and I can do that grilled cheese thingy. I can microwave soup. My signature dish is lasagna, but it's such a pain in the butt to make that I don't make it very often.

I decided to make scrambled eggs for dinner. I threw some eggs into a skillet, scrambled them a bit, then turned on the burner.

I then stood guard there, next to the skillet, because Zane likes to run up to the stove and 'see' what's there, which might mean that he will try to grab what is there. (I'm paranoid enough not to chance it.)

I then smelled smoke. My brain did what it always does in these situations: like a dog when it hears something weird, my brain cocked it's metaphorical head to the side. I looked down.

There were tendrils of smoke coming from underneath the skillet.

Was ist das????

I decided that something must have spilled on the burner at some point, and it was smoking.

That's happened before.

I reached up and turned on the exhaust fan, and waited for whatever was on the burner to burn away.

It didn't.

The smoke got a little thicker. I started waving my hand near the skillet, to circulate the smoke a little. I was nervous about setting off the alarm system, since I remembered very clearly what had happened the last time I did that.

I fanned the smoke a little faster in my nervousness.

Mistake. I will just go ahead right now and call my fanning of the smoke what it was--a dumbass move.

I heard the unmistakable sound of whatever was under the burner bursting into flame.

I took the skillet off the burner and put it on another burner. I said a few very bad words as I contemplated the small fire.

"What was that?" Larry called from the living room.

"I said, 'the stove is on fire'," a bit louder and censored for Zane.

Larry didn't even get up from the couch, which I suppose is a sad testament to his experience with my cooking. Meanwhile, I confronted the fire with grim determination.

First step in a crisis: Assess the situation.

Situation: There is a fire.

Second step in a crisis: Have a plan, one that did not include running around the kitchen screaming.

I knew exactly what to do in a fire: smother the flames. Great! I learned something from watching movies!

With what? I didn't have anything immediately handy. I didn't want to take my eyes off the fire, although it appeared to be contained within the drip pan underneath the burner.

"Not a towel, stupid", was my next thought. Towel+flame=bad. For a second longer, I was indecisive.

My indecisiveness annoyed me. I loathe indecisiveness with the white heat of the sun. This got me moving. I grabbed a cup, filled it with some water, and doused the flames. I leaped back as I did so, just in case there was a small explosion(it's an electric stove).

There was only the sound that a fire makes as it dies.

Crisis averted.

That was when I remembered the fire extinguisher that we keep on the counter next to the phone.

The kitchen was hazy with smoke. I opened the back door, then turned around.

Third step in a crisis: Evaluate the plan. I gave it a C, only because it took me so long to react.

Smoke seemed to be the only visible damage. Zane hollered from the living room that 'it smelled good'. I yelled back something, probably 'thank you'. My brain had gone on autopilot, and memory suffered.

The eggs were salvageable, so I finished cooking them on another burner. Parts of them were a little browned, due to the fact that there was an actual fire involved in their cooking.

"Dinner is ready," I hollered. Larry came into the kitchen, got a plate, and looked at the eggs. He saw that there were some browned eggs.

"What did you put in the eggs?" he wanted to know. I just looked at him, and to my credit, I did not say a word. Not. One. Word. I was really proud of myself.

I do like to cook, even though my husband won't eat what I make unless it's something he already likes like eggs, hamburgers, or lasagna. Eventually, I will become completely discouraged, sell all the pots and pans at a garage sale, and my family will live on microwave dinners.

For now, however, I will continue to forge on with my culinary efforts.

Kitchen Adventures, Part Three

We have been trying to eat more home-cooked meals to save some money, and I had seen a recipe for enchiladas that I thought would be pretty good. On a day that I had to stay home with Zane because he was not feeling well, I decided to try the recipe. The package that the recipe was on indicated that "Prep time" would be 15 minutes. I figured that I could do that. I managed to cook and shred some chicken while Zane was napping, and was very proud of myself.

I got all of the ingredients together and started to prepare the food. First on the agenda was to chop a small onion. Okay...I started chopping the onion.

"Mama, what's that?" Zane wanted to know. I explained that it was an onion, and told him that the smell would make him cry. While I am explaining this, my eyes started to water, so then I had to explain to him that Mama was not actually crying. Since I have a sacrosanct rule about using sharp implements when blind, I had to put down the knife and wait until my eyes weren't so teary. All told, it took me about 20 minutes to get the onion chopped.

Next I put the onions and some olive oil into a skillet to brown them. That went okay, so then I added all the other ingredients to the skillet, per the instructions, stirred it all together. It was time to put what was in the skillet(which smelled REALLY yummy) into tortillas, and then...

"Mama, I go poop," came a plaintive voice from the other side of the kitchen. I sighed heavily in my frustration at being interrupted. In my defense, I was starting to get a little hungry, so I was very focused on my task.

"Okay, sweets," I replied. Then I realized that Zane wasn't wearing a pullup, he was wearing underpants. He had been telling us when he had to 'go', but I guess that he was very focused on what he was doing, just like his Mama.

Ten minutes later, after I washed my hands, I went back into the kitchen to find that some of the gooey-goodness that was in the skillet on the stove had burned. I tasted it, and it still tasted good to me, so I wrapped everything up in the tortillas and got everything in the oven. I did think that it was kind of odd that there was not really any sauce to go on the enchiladas, but I had followed the recipe and the recipe did not call for any rojo sauce or verde sauce. I cleaned up the kitchen. I was very proud of myself.

When Larry came home and found out what we were having for dinner, he was skeptical.

"What about the sauce?" he wanted to know.

Marriage-Saving Rule #478: when your spouse has been working hard and cooking your dinner for you, do not say anything except "Thank you". I gave my husband a pointed look, and subtracted -50 DHP(dedicated husband points, in gamer terms). We sat at the table and began eating.

Objectively speaking, the enchiladas were pretty good for a first attempt. They would have been better with some verde sauce or even some queso. (these weren't really enchiladas, no matter what the Philly Cream Cheese people say.) Overall, I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

Larry ate about four bites of one enchilada, then got up from the table and came back with a jar of peanut butter and some bread. I watched him approach the table and sit down with my mouth hanging open a little, because who DOES that? Who completely blows off someone's efforts like that? Even if the food is downright horrid, who would hurt someone's feelings by indicating that they would rather eat a FREAKIN'PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH than the food you spent more than fifteen minutes preparing and cooking?

"What are you doing?" I finally asked.

"They really need sauce," Larry explained. I just looked at him.

"But they're okay," he added. I continued to blanky stare at him.

"But they're pretty good?" Larry is slow sometimes, but he finally realized that he was in the deep water without swim fins.

"But they're DELICIOUS!" Larry said again. I shifted my eyes toward the peanut butter, then back to my husband's face.

This is the sort of moment when I fervently wish that the Hand of God would come down from on High and smack my husband right upside the head.

Kitchen Adventures!

I decided to bake some brownies today. I wanted some chocolate, and brownies are awesome in that department. Betty Crocker makes wonderful brownies, and they have instructions that are INCREDIBLY easy to follow. With PICTURES!!!! There are pictures of EXACTLY what you will need to make the brownies: eggs, vegetable oil, and water. There are sequenced instructions that start off with TURN ON THE OVEN, IDIOT. Okay, the box really doesn't say that. It's implied. For people like me.

I am nothing if not a direction follower when it comes to food, so I gathered the eggs and the oil and started mixing everything together. There was even some Hershey's syrup to add to the mix. I noticed immediately that the batter was incredibly thick. In fact, it was very difficult to even stir. My hand got tired. It was cramping even! I did not recall brownies ever being this difficult.

I kept glancing at the PICTURES on the back of the box while I was struggling to mix the batter. The PICTURES of the ingredients. The PICTURES... Finally, it hit me, like a slap upside the head from God, that I forgot to put the 1/4 water that was pictured on the back of the brownie box.

Stirring the batter was infinitely easier after that. Now, however, I am worried that I may have contaminated them with my idiocy.