Saturday, March 17, 2007

The way the cookie crumbles

Hello, and happy Saturday evening.
I have returned from Mexico, bringing back large amounts of prescription drugs for all my parents many ailments, and spent more than 25 hrs, in a 42 hour period driving the car while my dad tirelessly searched for talk radio stations at a volume that would surely give a deaf man a headache. And I can't tell you when I enjoyed myself more. I went to Mexico!
But, I'll expound on the trip later.

At the moment I have far more important things to do. You see, I'm in the process of ruining food. It happens, many times when I try and cook. Not every time, but often enough for me to rejoice when a simple recipe turns out right.
Tonight I attempted something I've made many times before. It's a recipe (award winning I might add) from an Internet friend from Canada. She makes her living setting up booths at any/all craft fairs available. She's a great friend to have, especially when you're a klutzy cook and can use all the help you can get.

So tonight, I pulled things together and began cooking, wondering if the klutz gene would come out. And just so you know, I enjoy it when the klutz gene comes out in my attempts. It keeps me humble, and it's generally a mess of mistakes that I wouldn't be able to do on purpose even if I tried. It might mess up my plans, but it makes me smile for a very long time after while I try and figure out how things could have gone so wrong.

Tonight, only two things went wrong, wait, make that three, ok, 5 if you want to get technical.

I was going along well, until it came time to add vanilla. That was the moment I discovered I didn't have any vanilla.
So, in my typical fashion (it takes a lot to upset me), I shrugged it off and said "surely they won't ruin just because there's no vanilla". My words were almost prophetic. They didn't ruin JUST because there was no vanilla.
I moved along another step, adding the egg and beating the mix. I added the flour then, and ended up staring at it trying to figure out why it looked funny...I realized then, that the step before, I had stopped doubling the recipe. So I went back and added the extra ingredients I had neglected. I thought then, that this wasn't turning out too well.
THEN, I turned to get a teaspoon so I could measure the baking soda and salt.

That's when I discovered the first item to be "missing" from the move. I had no teaspoon/tablespoon measuring devices.
So after searching all over, I finally grabbed a spoon and determined that I would take a wild guess.
I don't cook much, and have very very little experience at seeing what a teaspoon amount of something looks like. But, even seconds after I'd made the jump, I knew that a teaspoon amount was not anywhere close to a plastic spoon mounded with baking soda. It was too late then, and I knew it would take an actual miracle (a miracle along the lines of making this double batch feed 5,000 people) to make this mess taste good.

Sure enough, it's nearing midnight now and the batches that have come out have, well, let's just say they haven't been good good. My closest comparison would be to have you imagine trying to eat a ball of cotton, with chocolate chips. I could probably market them, if I only knew of a disease that made your mouth produce too much moisture. Or maybe market them as gag gifts, like those pieces of gum that turn your teeth black.

Making a mess of things is far more fun than you'd think.

2 comments:

One Sided said...

I have a confession. I can't make Jello, jell. My wife has stood over me and watched to see that I did every step correctly andstill, we had lime soup.

Flyawaynet said...

You started my morning off with a laugh. Thank you.