Decided to change around my theme on my blog, hopefully people like it, if not, if anyone has any advice, please let me know.
I think on hurdle many face when it comes to cooking meals at home is the idea that it is difficult. We live in a society where celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay can chop some random ingredients up and toss it in a pot and that is a challenge for amateur chefs on Master Chef or watch over a group of competent chefs fuck up things like risotto and scallops. This can make the kitchen intimidating. I don’t know when I am going to open up the fridge and Chef Ramsay is going to come out and yell at me for being a stupid donkey for accidentally burning something or using sub-par ingredients due to my meager college budget. That being said, I want to talk about some of my kitchen fuck-ups to show that you get better with time, and the kitchen isn’t a scary place to be.
Confession: I am absolutely dreadful at making cookies. I remember one time I was going to make chocolate chip cookies. Now, every package of chocolate chips has a convenient little recipe for simple cookies on the back. It is very helpful to actually READ the damn thing, because like the idiot I am, I mixed all the ingredients together in a bowl, and almost burned out my mom’s mixer’s motor. Needless to say, I had to have her bail me out and fix that problem. Another time in my cooking class in high school, we were tasked with making cookies. Working alongside on of my friends (who has become a chef) we mixed up the ingredients, but we must have reduced the numbers wrong, because the result was flat, partially baked goo after the baking time. That was not a good day, and I went home feeling embarrassed and like I let my friends down.
Another time I tried to make a reduction like I learned in another class (hmm, notice how I can’t cook desserts?) and wound up going from a thin sugar sauce, to something akin to gasoline. I made my sister try it. I don’t think she forgave me for that stunt. Another time, as a graded assignment, my group was tasked with making a pudding pie. We followed the recipe exactly, and set the pie in the fridge for the set amount of time. The next day when it came to presenting, we presented soup. Somehow the pudding did not set after several hours.
Most recently, my biggest battle came from shallow frying some tofu for a stir fry. I set everything up, and prepared to start cooking. I checked the oil to see if it was too hot, or cold. It was just right. So I start frying up the little fuckers, and what do they do but pop and spatter oil all over me. It’s interesting what you call cooking food as it gives you several minor burns on your hands and forearms. Later on, I noticed that my t-shirt had oil marks all over it, indicating that I am glad that I did not decide to try and be sexy (to who I would be sexy to, I do not know, I was home alone at the time) and cook shirtless.
So who all out there has horror stories about cooking? Anything memorable and funny you are willing to share?
Image from State Farm on Flickr, with no changes made.
The Nutrition Punk 