I can cook. Just not very well.

me: Oh, thank GOD you’re here.

the bee: What happened?

m: I think I may have ruined the chicken.

b: What makes you say that?

m: I’m not sure if I cooked it long enough.

b: How long did you cook it for?

m: About 15 minutes, but it feels raw to me.

b: Should we really be feeling it?

m: I think so.

b: Well, when you cut it open is the chicken pink or is it white inside?

m: It’s white but I tried some and it felt like raw in my throat.

b: *raises a concerned and skeptical eyebrow*

m: Should it be white on the outside too? Because it doesn’t look very appetizing…

b: Steff, it’s fine. It looks exactly the same as when I cook the chicken.

m: You’re just saying that. I won’t believe you til you try it.

b: Ok. (Takes bite and chews for an inordinate amount of time to eat a reasonably sized piece of chicken)

*gulps* It’s… good.

m: *waves arms in a defeated and hysterical manner* Oh my GOD! Somehow I’ve managed to make it both raw and overcooked. I’ve ruined dinner! It’s a disaster.

and poison!

b: You just need to relax. This is not a disaster and it’s not poison. It’s chicken.

m: *mumbles under breath* poison chicken…

b: *sideways glance*

m: Well?

b: Maybe…

Tomato Soup Spatter is Forever a Part of our Kitchen Décor a.k.a. So What? Who Cares?! (to be said in the voice of Joy Behar as played by SNL’s Fred Armisen)

I refuse to give up on my quest for obtaining domesticity points in the kitchen however much the odds are stacked against me. Over the weekend I did the unthinkable. I made my first ever attempt at going solo in dinner preparation and it was only semi-disastrous!

Ok, maybe it was 1/3 disastrous, 1/3 successful and 1/3 entirely too simple to completely fuck up even for me so can I really consider this a Grande feat at all?

The answer is yes, people. The answer is YES.

In a strange twist of events I took to food prep this evening while the bee did something. It’s been like 4 days, do really expect me to remember what? GAWD.

The recipe was easy enough:

4 Tomatoes (I would advise picking something extra red & juicy like a Roma tomato because it’ll make a big difference in the final product. I would know, I’m cheap and used shitty tomatoes so mine could have been way better.)

4 Cups Tomato Juice (Any brand. Doesn’t matter.)

1 Cup Heavy Cream (You could probably get away with using less.)

1/4 Cup Butter

Pinches of Salt, Pepper & Parsley

Simmer, puree, re-heat add some more stuff and serve!

Easy enough, right?

HA!!!!

The directions first called for dicing, peeling and seeding the tomatoes, then adding those and the tomato juice to a large pot to simmer for 30 minutes.

That part = so wildly successful that I felt like calling the bee into the kitchen just to show him how good I did much like a little kid might call their mom into the bathroom after making their first big kid poo in the grown-up potty.

Monumental, to say the least.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand here’s the part called DISASTER…

The directions next called for the concoction on the stovetop to be transferred into a blender to be pureed until there was nothing left but liquid-y goodness.

This should have been a simple CLEAN transition but nothing, I mean NO-THING, in my life is simple or clean.

I managed to pour a decent amount of the pre-puree onto the counter and all around the base of the blender during the first transfer.

Not a huge deal. Just wiped it up.

Now that I’d transferred the tomato slop from one vessel to another you would think the worst was behind me but oh how very very WRONG you would be.

Apparently I don’t know how to use a blender because after actively procrastinating and tentatively pressing buttons to ensure I was doing things the “right” way everything that could have possibly gone wrong basically did.

I THOUGHT I had my hand on the lid. I THOUGHT I had control over the electrical spinney device with razor sharp killing apparatus inside. Maybe I was a little TOO apprehensive which was what ultimately caused the lid to fly off and tomato puree to spew EV-ER-Y-WHERE.

On the floor. On the counter. On the stove. IN the crevice BETWEEN the counter and the stove (and that shit is there permanently, ya’ll). On the oven. In the sink. On the mini-blinds ABOVE the sink as well as ALL-OVER-MYSELF.

This is what our kitchen typically looks like:

And this is what our kitchen looked like after I was let loose in that bitch:

At this point, there was no other recourse but to have the bee step in. He assisted in some of the clean-up and manned the blender because I had proven that I was clearly less than able to complete this otherwise straight-forward task.

No use in crying over spilled tomato slop, right?

Well apparently nobody told me that because even after the blender disaster and the 30 minutes of clean-up it required and gaining assistance from the bee and finally having (what was supposed to be) the most difficult part of the process behind me I managed to YET AGAIN! spill that shit when pouring it from the blender back into the pot.

Once more, liquid tomato is all over the stove AND the counter top AND dribbling down the oven door into a pool of mess on the kitchen floor.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand this is when I start to cry.

Because I’m clearly a total head-case/loser-faced toolbox who can’t even manage to POUR.

It was then that I realized that this last mess might not have been completely my fault.

Here’s a picture of our blender:

That handy little pouring “lip” didn’t do diddley SQUAT for me. You would have thought that I had used a garden hose to get that stuff back into the pot with the amount of residual spray there was in the kitchen.

So I cleaned it up AGAIN, alone this time, mainly because I was too ashamed proud to ask for help.

And just so this seems like it’s a legit-type recipe post I’ll have you know that the rest of it went off without a hitch. I just brought that baby back to a simmer, added the butter and the cream and…

VOILA!!!

the black stuff is parsley (i think)

OH-MAGAHD.

I almost forgot to mention my s e c r e t ingredient…

SUGAR!!!

LOTS of sugar. Like 3 tablespoons of that stuff. Minimum.

Holy crap.

Did you just read a cooking post of mine?

I’ve got 2 words for you:

Death. Wish.

(Not So) Lazy Sunday

Every weekend since returning from our Wildwood vacation, I have been 1) meaning to write a post about it and 2) basically holed up in our apartment playing PS3 (we’re working through the Lego series currently), determining which spiders can stay and which must go depending on where they are living in our home (I really hate them but they DO kill bad bugs and are especially effective if webbed near a window), and generally shirking all else of life’s duties and requirements.

Such an awesome team, we are.

Here is some pictoral proof of what we did (and did not entirely) accomplish:

Went to A.C. Moore and bought the workings for a homemade silk screening project. We determined pretty early on that the “screen” (we used sheer curtains as suggested by a craft blogger) was a bit too porous and wouldn’t really work as-is. Any thoughts for a better material to construct a homemade screen for t-shirt printing?

Cut apart a skirt in the hope that I can turn it into a basic vest type-thingy. Yeah, that’s still what it looks like right now. I’m not sure how to tackle this one. I think I need a dummy figure so I can drape the fabric and take measurements. OR a volunteer who isn’t afraid of pin pricks. Anyone?

I DID, however, make this nifty little headband out of the waist band from above mentioned skirt. I used the existing button hole to pull fabric through from the other end, sewed it secure and then added a random square wooden button for embellishment. I’m thinking of creating more of these as holiday gifts for lady-friends.

This past week our family lost a beloved canine friend. The Bee whipped up some double strawberry cupcakes for our little niece to help ease the pain. In our house, the Bee is the butcher, the baker, AND the candlestick maker. Since this picture was taken, even fewer remain. They were DELISH.

Here is The Bee trying to solve a tricky math puzzle on my DS. I hate math. I love my DS. It has a camera and internet access. Turns out the puzzle wasn’t math related after all. That was the trick.

The Bee made dinner and was it ever GOOD. In my defense I did make the sauce, as much as throwing in some sugar & spices to a can of crushed tomatoes consitutes as making something. Though he scoffed when I said it, I stand by my statement that “These are the best stuffed-shells I’ve ever had” mostly because I’m pretty conviced they were and somewhat because I can’t remember the last time I had them. We are both very lucky that he enjoys making food for us. I don’t even know what we’d do if it were up to me…

I also succeeded at ruining YET ANOTHER article of clothing due to laundry-brain FAIL. Last month it was my expensiv-o No Doubt tour shirt that WAS hella cool and is now hella pink thanks to me washing it (unbeknownst) with a red rug. It is also apparently irreplaceable since neither or us have found it anywhere online and I’m pretty sure the tour is over, soooo…

This weekend it was a nice maroon polo shirt of Bee’s that now has spotty bleach marks all across the back due to my laying it out to dry on top of the washing machine which apparently had bleach residue on it. I’m not sure if this means I need to buy MORE clothes now or if this is some sort of sign pointing in the direction of downsizing and a general de-materialification in my life. How does one resolve the internal conflict between the WANT for certain material possessions and the NEED to live smaller & more economically?

This sounds like the beginnings of a whole ‘nother post…