Friday, August 28, 2009

And I quote "the kitchen hates me"


Ah Its been a while since my last blog attempting to battle the stove...Which brings me here today. Its around 11 pm as I stumble into the kitchen, grumpy pants and all, to cure my midnight sweet tooth, I was going to make hot chocolate. My stubborn conscience pointed out that I couldn't just make instant hot chocolate, a bag of flavoured goodness a fancy mug, and hot water.Simple right? My conscious defeated my common sense once again, as I flicked on the 'correct' burner. Fully aware that I chose the right one...right bottom circle matches right bottom burner. I searched through my fridge checking the expiry dates on the 3 different jugs of milk. How else do you make hot chocolate? Boil milk add real chunks of chocolate, a few marshmellows and voila!, complete satisfaction. The kitchen proved me wrong once again. All was going well, I was nearly drooling over the steaming brown liquid as I threw in large marshmellows. You can tell someone who cant cook is the type to cook everything on high because it will cook faster right? well I'm that person. Suddenly my late night dessert is spilling all over the stove, quite rapidly I must admit. The stove is now smoking, my marshmellows are burning to the inside of the burner, the fan is running on as high as it will go, and I'm throwing a hissy fit. What else is new..Kitchen 3 Jessica 0. Chef Ramsey would kick me out of the kitchen..YES CHEF!

Monday, August 10, 2009

The kitchen kicked my ass today..but it was delicious.


I really didn't intend to write all my blogs about cooking,I don't enjoy cooking, although I do enjoy eating. Hence the reason I challenged the evil stove again tonight. Mother and I made a paprika breaded chicken with pesto sauce pasta, well sort of I made a tomato sauce for mine, fresh mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes and almost every spice in my cupboard. moms consisted of garlic, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and basil. I must admit it was sort of fun. Yes I had my mishaps once again as I do always, Ive got to be the most clumsy person known to the cooking world. Its really quite ridiculous. I managed to literally grab the stove rack...and yeah I had a pot holder in hand, unfortunately my right thumb managed to escape. the rest went downhill from there, although after my screaming hissy fit and unavoidable cursing, things went slightly back to normal. We were almost finished when it was time to drain our perfectly cooked multi grain noodles. Mom put the lid on and proceeded to ask my dad to drain them, Well that's where I stepped in I recall saying something along the lines of "We don't need dad to drain the noodles, I can do it, who needs a man, I dont, I'll do it." (after proclaiming about what seemed to be 50 times that I dont need a man, I proceeded to ask him to open a jar that I needed, boy did that one bite me in the ass) anyways, I had less then an inch of water left in the pot when i dropped the whole darn thing of noodles into our sink, that I really don't think was cleaned out after we washed dishes...yuck. I re-boiled the water cleaned off the noodles and voila...perfection. (I wasn't going to waste a full pot of noodles) so yes we ate them and it was Delicious. I did manage to ruin my meal by running over to the nearest corner store for a bucket of strawberry shortcake ice cream to share with my mother. I am so full! But it was well worth it. We split the whole bucket in half, otherwise we wouldn't have agreed to sharing, we both dug out all the strawberry chunks and left it. Its funny how alike we are. We topped off the night watching No reservations, an amazing movie I must admit.We are such chicks.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

"I could blog about burning down the house"


"I hate cooking."This ones for Julie Powell, thanks to her creative cooking blog. I was truly inspired. For what seemed to be 5 minutes. Sorry Julie I tried. My mother decided to teach me how to make a simple bechemel sauce. ( some white creamy sauce) I don't know cooking terms, language or anything else along those lines. In fact Ive always convinced myself that I hated cooking, apparently its not my forte. My mother was a chef in cooking school or something like that point being is she loves cooking to high heaven. So lets rewind here, this wasn't my first attempt. It all began one afternoon while my stomach was trying to tell me that after starving myself all morning I should finally eat something...all hail Kraft dinner macaroni. The most simple food an eight year old can accomplish, boil water add noodles drain add sauce milk and butter, and if all else fails read the step by step instructions on the side. So here I am in our one person size kitchen, 4 burners 4 dials and a pot. My mother has a knack for saving crushed egg shells in a container for her plants that she leaves on our stove top.OK this is easy fill the pot turn the dial wait for it to boil, until then I walk away to watch some television show. 10 minutes pass and I realize I have forgotten to check my boiling water, and much to my surprise my water is still ice cold-the only thing boiling is my moms container of egg shells. How on earth did I manage to turn on the wrong dial that is so simply labeled with matching filled in circles just so this sort of thing could be avoided. and I've run into the impossible. so now our stove is on fire and there is melted plastic cooking away-yum. add the cheese and lunch is served. That was my first attempt. Second attempt, that would be today, making a delicious sauce, spending quality time with my mom learning to cook (something shes always wanted to share with me) Things are going great, sauce is waiting to thicken! I loved it. My dad walks in asking when dinners ready and just happens to notice our rice cooker is smoking. Mom and I just figured it was smoking cause It was cooking rice for supper. We soon came to realize that the rice cooker was melted to the bottom of our platter plate it usually sits on. Once again Ive turned on the wrong burner. We now need a new rice cooker and Ive given up cooking. The kitchen hates me.