Friday Fuck Ups


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Friday Fuck-Up: Two Steps is Clearly Too Many

bread

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a Friday Fuck-up around here.  It’s not that I haven’t blown it in the kitchen lately.  I cook dinner nearly every night of the week, so naturally, things don’t always go as planned.  However, my flubs have been rather run of the mill: soupy lasagna, over/undercooked rice, spills, etc.  But then, the bread happened, and it was just too epic not to share.

Let me just say, before I get into the details, that I blame my children.  If not for their constant shenanigans, particularly in the middle of the night, I might have two brain cells left to rub together.  They bring great joy to my life,  and all I have to give them in return is ten of my IQ points.   Not a bad deal, but it can lead to problems.  Like the one you see above.

On Saturday, my husband took the kids to the park.  He has gotten in the habit of making bread using a book (more on that soon), and all I needed to do was take off the plastic bags resting on top of the loaves and put them in the oven.  Apparently I have not yet reached the developmental milestone of following two-step directions because I failed to remove the plastic from one of the loaves before putting it in the oven.  Yes, that’s right.  The lovely glaze in the photo above is a melted Ziplock bag.  The green squiggle next to it?  That would be the melted zipper.

Fortunately (and illogically), I only screwed up one of the two loaves, and the odor of burnt plastic only lasted a few hours.  And in exchange, I have this lovely post to share with you.  You are welcome.

in Personal 4 comments
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Friday Eff-Up: Bad Eggs

badegg

On some cooking show or another, I heard a chef complimented because he allows his proteges to really get into life in the kitchen, not like some French chefs who will shove you in a corner to peel potatoes for three years before you can get near the stove. Oddly, though, the thought of sitting in a corner peeling potatoes is appealing to me at the point in my life.  I think it’s because with two small children, I am never left alone to go to the bathroom, let alone complete an entire task by myself. This very blog post will likely be completed in five sittings.

However, if I ever do make my way to this mythical French kitchen full of menial tasks, I should be kept far away from the hard boiled eggs. I am truly terrible at peeling them, and I don’t know why. I take out chunks of flesh, I leave little grains of peel stuck to the egg; it’s horrific. Up until a few months ago, this didn’t pose a  serious problem, as my obligations in egg-peeling were few. But then, my two-year-old son joined the world of unitasker-lovers, and asks daily to use his egg slicer.  The dismembered Humpty-Dumpty above is the far too frequent result.  Please give my apologies to the chickens.

in Eggs 4 comments
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Friday Fuck-Up: Cupcake Turds

photo

Ya’ll know I am bakingly challenged, but I decided to give it a go this week and help in making cupcakes for a friend’s birthday. I must have been watching too much Food Network lately or something, because  I thought I was cool enough to get fancy and try that thing where you pipe the frosting out of a plastic bag.

This is what happened. How the eff do you do this properly?!?

Also, did you guys know that frosting is just butter and sugar?!? OMG that is NOT healthy!

in Desserts 3 comments
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Friday Fuck-Up: Awful Waffle

First of all, did anyone catch the sweet Salute Your Shorts reference I just made?  No?  Okay.  Moving on.

You know what bugs me? Recipes that use only part of a can of something.  For example, I have a pizza sauce recipe that calls for 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. If I actually follow those instructions, I am left with most of a can of tomato paste to put in the fridge, where I will undoubtedly find it two weeks later covered with a layer of white, suspicious fuzz. Mmm.

So, it was with this in mind that, when I set out to make pumpkin waffles last week (that’s right, pumpkin waffles, not pumpkin spice waffles), and the recipe called for 2/3 of a can of pumpkin, I figured, what the heck?  I dumped in the whole can. And…well, you can see what happened above.

In the annals of Friday F-ups, this one certainly won’t go down as one of the worst, as once I picked the waffle bits off the maker, the whole thing still tasted great.  Plus, as I always say…

When life gives you runny waffle batter, make pancakes.

in Breakfast 2 comments
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Friday Fuck-Up: The Gremlin Incident

The kitchen Gremlin. I have one. And he only makes his presence known when I’m cooking for company. I do occasionally like to cook outside of my comfort zone, and in the past I’ve discovered new dishes and taste combinations that I hadn’t expected, and was so blown away that I couldn’t wait to master and introduce them to my family and fellow foodies. But then, HE appears and all hell breaks loose!

I have two dishes that I have previously produced in world-class fashion and couldn’t wait to share with others. One is the classic béarnaise sauce. I loves me some steak, and I can’t think of a more perfect, decadent accompaniment than a just-made, thick, buttery béarnaise. The first three times that I attempted this sauce it came out perfect! I couldn’t wait to have the gang over for a French gorgy, and watch their eyes roll up into the backs of their heads after they took their first bite of a perfectly cooked dry-aged filet mignon smothered in the crack cocaine of butter sauces.

But the Gremlin had other ideas and decided at the last minute that a greasy version of egg drop soup would (for some evil reason), be the only sauce that came off my cook top. A hurried second attempt produced a scrambled egg dish that looked like yellow cottage cheese. What the hell? I had this down! I could feel the ghost of Julia Child bitch slapping the back of my head as I whipped up a sorry version of a Dijon crème sauce in its place.

My second Gremlin dish is one that I initially tried on a dare.

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in Featured / Fish / Personal / Red Meat 0 comments
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Friday Fuck-Up: Hot Cherries

With this terrible heatwave through the Midwest (and much of the country) I’ve had to start my oven hiatus. The temperature inside our house has reached at least 90 every day for the last two weeks. Finally, I decided that it probably couldn’t get much hotter so I turned the oven on to roast some cherries and make Jeni’s Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Roasted Red Cherries.

Well, ten minutes into the roasting I smelled something burning. I opened the oven to see the cherries bubbling over and small fires on the bottom of the oven. The cherries ended up okay, but oven needs a good scraping and my baking dish is now candy-coated.

Oops.

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Friday Fuck-Up: Sometimes Booze Doesn’t Improve Things

 

I know. I KNOW! You read that headline and the fact it was written by me, and your world turned upside down. Your illusions were shattered. I’m sorry! Above all, I have let myself down. But… I’m gonna say it anyway…

Sometimes booze makes things worse, not better.

No, no, NO. Before we get any further, let’s get one thing straight right now: I am not about to tell y’all why you should quit drinking or anything preposterous like that. I’m talking about one very specific, very isolated incident.

Now, most people would see a protein shake and probably not think, “I bet this would be way better if I added trashy flavored vodka to it.” But guess what, most people aren’t me. I received a sample of CalNaturale Svelte, a nutritious and soy protein-packed energy shake, and while I thought it was tasty and filling on its own, I was intrigued by the myriad alcohol possibilities I could introduce into the mix. After all, there has been a considerable amount of buzz about alcohol-related diets and weight loss lately, so I figured, why can’t I hop aboard this train?

Next stop, diet White Russian town. I poured a generous amount of Smirnoff “toasted marshmallow” flavored vodka into my shake, added a splash of Kahlua, and prepared my tastebuds for a tasty, boozy, “healthy” (you know, because of the protein shake) treat.

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in Drinks 6 comments
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