Saturday, March 13, 2010

One Wow kind of cooking day, deserves another

I have heard from a few people that I cook pretty good. This is sadly untrue. I have a couple good recipes that I love to use and I love to find new ones to use. My easily being distracted makes being a good cook out of the question and the chance of chopping off an extremity very probable. The other day I decided to make chicken noodle soup with our left-over chicken and gravy. I chopped onions, carrots, celery- nearly missing a finger several times and got it all going. I then decided that I had started the bread way too late, so I began making baking powdered biscuits to go along with our soup. I mixed the dry ingredients, made a well in the center and poured the milk in, mixed and then began to look at rolling them out, when I stopped- Something was wrong. Did anyone else catch that? Yeah, a key ingredient in a 200 calorie biscuit- the butter!! I tried to cut in butter to the already mixed dough. Don't try it. It doesn't work. I could have kept trying, but I decided to cut my losses and start over again- saving as much of the butter as I could. Luckily, I did this, because just then the bread machine beeped at me that it was beginning it's final rising stage. This is where I take it out, let it rise in a nice stone bread pan and then cook it in the oven. I lifted the lid and found a nicely shifted pile of flour. Key ingredient I forgot- the liquid! I poured the water in and restarted the bread. That night around 9:30 pm, I realized I had let the second batch rise too much and had to punch it down and put it in the fridge to try again another day.
We finally sat down to dinner at 7 pm. It was a busy day! I took the first bite and immediately tasted soap. I frequently taste soap, so I carried on and it got better until I looked at my husband's face. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I taste soap." So the investigation began. We ended up deciding it was the noodles. I had bought a big box from Costco and put them in the laundry room with the rest of our food storage. The box I got into that night had obviously gotten wet and then dried. The noodles seemed fine and I was in a hurry, so I really didn't investigate. Too bad- It ruined the soup. I had told the boys they had to eat all their soup before getting a biscuit, so they were chowing down and Emma had already finished hers. I am happy to say that no ill effects have surfaced so far from that unfortunate ingestion! So we had baking powdered biscuits for dinner- thankfully, I had redone those!
The next day I was in a hurry again. I yelled down for Emma to peel potatoes while I did my hair and got dressed for work. I came down and helped her cut the potatoes- nearly missing my fingers yet again. This irony always gets me when I think that I am on my way to the ER one way or the other! We boiled the potatoes, while I ran around like a mad woman. I added the evaporated milk and white pepper and then called Sam to come gets some before fencing class. I dished him up a steaming hot bowl of potato soup- yep, just potatoes! I neglected to put anything else in that soup. When I told Rob, he asked that I please take a break from cooking and to refocus myself so as not to kill anyone in the ER that night! I am happy to say that no one met their demise at my hands that night!
Here's to better cooking days in the future!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

and you call me absent minded and alittle flighty. Mom