So much for my good intentions

I thought I'd be ambitious with my cooking this week. Plus, crab legs were on sale and we never get to eat crab legs. But I quickly figured out why you pay so much for crab legs at a restaurant.

Well the packaging said to steam for about 3 minutes. I put about an inch or so of water and steamer basket in my pot, got it boiling and everything, and put in the crab legs. Within about a minute and a half the thing was boiling over. It was very strange, since like I said, there was only an inch or maybe 2 of water in this huge pot. But it got all bubbly and made a mess all over my stove. So I did my best to keep it steaming without continuing to make a mess.

Oh, I almost forgot, I also was heating up the butter for dipping in on of my measuring cups and the cup cracked open across the bottom and spilt melted butter all over my microwave.

Then, once we got everything cleaned up, we gave them a try. And you know what? They weren't bad! Really good, actually. Only problem was we didn't have the right tools for eating crab legs. Then once we got about halfway through, I started noticing that the meat was mushy and kind of slimy feeling. And the smell... oh my goodness, seriously the smell was as acrid as hair dye in an enclosed space. The taste was about as bad. The problem was, by the time we realized they just weren't cooked enough, we'd already broken most of them open so we really couldn't try cooking them anymore and we just had to throw them out.

I really hate wasting food. Especially nice food that I don't buy often because it's expensive. To top it all off, my house now smells like crab. I've had to windows open and candles burning hoping to get rid of it, but it's still pretty bad. Even my jacket, which I had out last night, still smells like it.

But I suppose you live and you learn. Everyone's going to make a failed meal every now and then. I'll know better if I ever decide to try again to make sure that all of them get cooked evenly. For now, I may stick with forking over the extra cash to have them professionally cooked.

Pardon the onion

I tend to get down on myself a lot for mistakes I make around the house. Like yesterday, I tried to make enchiladas with a sour cream sauce and mid-way through the recipe I realize I'm missing a key ingredient (of course, this is about 2 hours after I just ran to the store to pick up some other things) and it's much too late at this point to run out and pick it up. So I saved what I had and put it together tonight. It came out OK, but I used way too much onion. And I like onions,  we all know what too much onion is like. I can't imagine this taste in my mouth going away any time soon. But I find myself apologizing constantly for my little errors. "I'm sorry there's no dinner ready tonight," "I'm sorry I didn't make it to the store today," or "I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to clean up the kitchen."

I think one problem I have is I'm constantly comparing myself to my mother who never seemed to make these mistakes. But then I realize two things:

1. She'd had 10 years (or so) of practice before I even start remembering things! I'm sure she went through the same stupid mistakes that I make and, if they had cell phones back then, probably would've called her mom a million times in the grocery store when she couldn't find what she was looking for. (And Mom, if you didn't, then don't tell me and let me live in my little delusional world). I guess this is my time to have a go at it and make those mistakes now so I know better for the future.

And 2. She wasn't perfect at everything while I was growing up (Sorry, Mom). I remember this one Thanksgiving where we almost didn't have any turkey gravy because she'd gotten a new roasting pan and the teflon started flaking off in the gravy. What she did best was stay calm in the scenario. I would've been freaking out about how Thanksgiving was ruined and everyone was going to be so disappointed. But we kept it quiet and strained it out the best we could and served the teflon-laced gravy (If anybody asks, it's just some extra pepper and spices). Nobody knew the difference and nobody died of teflon poisoning.

I think I need to start handling things more gracefully and have a bit more of a "c'est la vie" mentality. I think it's the whole newly-wed ideology that I'm supposed to be Donna Reed and have the house spotless, hot dinner on the table (while already having cleaned the kitchen, I might add) and not a hair out of place. I hope to change this idea and just realize that next time I'll know to use less onion and more cheese. I'll see that I'm not a failure at life just because I forgot to pick up some more chicken broth at the grocery store. And I'll realize that I'll get the hang of things one of these days.

Someone's in the Kitchen with...

I love to cook! I may be obsessed. One of my favorite things to do is find new recipes online and I have a very long list of ones that I want to try. It's especially fun now that I have all of this new stuff for my kitchen, some of which I still haven't gotten a chance to use. However, at this point in my life, I'm not a particularly good cook. Don't get me wrong, I can follow a recipe with the best of 'em and come up with something really yummy, but I'm not good at coming up with stuff myself and putting a bunch of ingredients together and coming up with a great new recipe. But I really want to be one of those people who can do that. I'd really love to someday when I have the time (you know, since life tends to get LESS busy as you go) to take a couple cooking classes and really get into the swing of things.

I like to get involved in moderately complicated recipes that require a lot of ingredients, but I rarely have the opportunity to get into that. For now, I'm somewhat stuck with my real quick, real easy dinners. I know that I could always make a big dinner if I wanted, but since I don't get to have Jarrod, or anyone for that matter, join me, I just can't find the motivation. Spending a lot of time in the kitchen isn't particularly fun by itself, but the reward of having a great meal to share with someone makes it worth it. Making it for myself and leaving left overs for Jarrod just doesn't do it for me. So Friday's tend to be my big cooking days. I get a little rest in the afternoon, since I'll have been up since about 3am, and put something together for when Jarrod comes home that evening. Our weekends have been so busy that Saturday evenings we tend to eat out or with someone else. At least there's usually never time to spend actually cooking. And Sundays are our "do nothing" day of the week, especially since it's a short day for me and I have to be in bed so early. So I'm hoping for the day to come where I can cook meals any day of the week and have someone there to share it with. I'd love so much to be able to have dinner dates during the week! It's amazing the little things in life that you miss once you can't do them.

So last month I set the goal of making something out of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Well I had no idea what I was getting myself into! Most of the recipes really aren't that bad at first glance, but once you start going through them, you realize that several times throughout the recipe, it refers you to another recipe on another page, so suddenly your one simple recipe has turned into about 4 much more complicated recipes. They're really the type of thing that you need a lot of time (and ingredients... and specific cooking accessories) to accomplish, and as I've explained, cooking time is just not in the cards for me right now. But nevertheless, I accomplished this goal (albeit a day late, but who's paying that close attention?) last week by making the Chocolate Almond cake and it is AH-SO-GOOD! I even put my own little twists in it by substituting a couple of ingredients and putting things together a little differently. I figure that's the point of a recipe anyways. It's "more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules" (a great movie reference included!).

But this cake is so rich! I don't think there's anyway that we'll be able to eat the whole thing, because as a normal cake is 8 slices, this one is more like 30 since you have to cut them so small! But I felt very domestic making it. I melted my own chocolate, pulverized my own almonds, and beat together my own icing (over ice!). Plus, I finally got to use the beautiful cake platter I received from the wedding! I look forward to someday having the opportunity to put together great meals for my family. My mom always had great home cooked meals for us everyday after school. I hope I'm in a place someday where I can actually do that. But for now, I'll have to put my desire for dinner parties and cooking clubs aside and look forward to the day where I can slave away in the kitchen with the best of 'em. Ahh the finer things of life...

Yummy!