Thursday, December 14, 2006

What was I thinking?

This year I thought I'd be Suzy Homemaker and bake the girl's teacher gifts. Anyone who knows me is now rolling on the floor with hysterical laughter.
I don't cook. Seriously. I can make maybe five dishes, all of which are almost fool proof. DH prepares our dinners, he has for most of our marriage.

So why, might you ask, did this idiotic idea even occur to me? I honestly couldn't say. All I know is when it popped into my head, logic shut off. I thought it might be fun, a good way to spend some time with the girls while saving some money.

Ha.

The girls lost interest in baking days ago - about the time this doomed project started. We've made over 100 buckeyes (peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate), 2 batches of chocolate fudge (because the first was too hard), 2 batches of peanut butter fudge (because the first was too soft), 2 batches of pecan pralines (because the first hardened in the bowl before I could get it on the wax paper). Do you see a pattern?

I've blistered my thumb, melted a supposedly microwave safe bowl and gone through a sea of sugar and marshmallow fluff. I am never, ever, never doing this again!

Have you ever started a project only to have it turn to dust in your hands?

Instigator

16 comments:

Maureen said...

Well, I remember a few months ago when I had to bake brownies for a church fundraiser and I forgot to add the eggs.

Pat L. said...

I love the new site - nice seeing you "girls" on the swing set. Very appropriate.

Theresa N. said...

I have to bake just about anything a dozen times to get it right. But I keep trying.

Andrea Laurence AKA Smarty Pants said...

Attempting once to make an old fashioned batch of fudge, I screwed it up so badly I had to throw the pot away with the burnt sugar. Yay!

I find the humidity here is my nemesis. It makes fudge too soft, divinity won't even come together and my rice krispy treats fall apart. Hopefully I will do okay tomorrow when I attempt this...

SP

Katherine Bone said...

Oh, yes, I can! How about being newly married and trying new recipes to impress the DH. Let me just say the Pea Casserole was so nasty we had to eat out that night and that color green is forever etched in my memory. One experience is sooo embarrassing that I can't put it on the internet but remind me to tell you girls another time. Believe me, you'll be amazed at my stupidity or should I say my public shame.

I've made rolls and forgotten to add sugar to the yeast. I've forgotten to add baking soda to cookies...

Let me just say, I had a terrible temper when I was younger. (I think I've mellowed with age, but one would wonder after I got some contest results recently.) Anyway, when I was 16, I was sewing a Vogue pattern, a western skirt. Well...to put it mildly the skirt didn't do what I wanted it to and after many a threat, I threw it into the bottom of the closest. Two years later, after the anger had cooled, I pulled it out and fixed the problem. I've burned Hummingbird food until it was nothing but black powder. (Thankfully the fire department didn't answer the fire alarm.) I've melted spoons, obtained blisters, burned my arm, etc...

I feel for you, Instigator. But hang in there. You're not just creating goodies, you're making memories. :-)

Kathy
(Word verification. Irkayefa, is that a word? LOL)

Problem Child said...

Oh gosh, is this one of those Mom things I'm supposed to be doing?

Ah, crap.

Playground Monitor said...

When the DH and I were first married, I barely knew how to boil water. We lived off a lot of Hamburger Helper while I learned to make other things from scratch.

I decided I wanted to learn to make chili and pulled out my trusty Betty Crocker red-and-white-checkered cookbook and found a recipe for chili. It called for 1 to 2 teaspoons of chili powder. In my ignorance, I bought cayenne pepper instead.

The DH came home to an apartment that smelled wonderful and I proudly served him a bowl of my homemade chili. He ate the first spoonful and grabbed for his glass of tea. It wasn't hot, it was nuclear!

Of course, we won't mention that novel I started a few years ago.

PM

Lois said...

Oh, when it comes to the kitchen, just about half of everything that I ever did. . . LOL :)

Lois

Anonymous said...

Oh gosh, is this one of those Mom things I'm supposed to be doing?

LOLOL!! No, PC. You don't have to bake for the teachers. Knowing my son, his teacher would probably be afraid to eat anything he brought in.

As for kitchen disasters, I don't have many only because I watch a ton of the Food Channel. I have a crush on Alton Brown and hang on his every word, no matter how nerdy it may be.

catslady said...

I have one of those no room for a table type kitchens. Baking cookies is always a disaster. Just not enough room. My girls always gave up interest halfway through and the mess was amazing.

Andrea Laurence AKA Smarty Pants said...

I thought I was the only one with an Alton Brown nerd-crush... :)

SP

Anonymous said...

I'm a food Network junkie, too. However, I only watch, never try any of those made from scratch cookie disasters. I fully believe thats why they have those pre-cut cookies in the cooler section og the grocery stores!

Anonymous said...

Nope, it's not just you. When Alton goes on about the molecular structure of chicken eggs or ionizing water as a form of purification...well...that's just an orgasm in a blender, IMO. ;-)

(We can say orgasm here, right?)

Kira Sinclair - AKA Instigator said...

LOL heck yay we can say orgasm :-)

And okay, since we're confessing, I admit that late at night after DH has gone to bed I've been known to sneak on a little Alton Brown. There's just something about an intelligent man who can cook...

Insigator

Jill James said...

Baking I can do. Crafts I can not. A few years back I was making arrows for the boys who were going from cub scouts to boy scouts. I didn't have an Exacto knife so I used a drywall knife on balsa wood and almost sliced off my finger. A trip to the emergency room and seven stitches later they said I 'might' keep the tip of my finger but no nerve endings. I'll stick to baking. LOL

Anonymous said...

Oh, don't let your Playground Monitor pull the wool over your eyes. Did you know that she won the Betty Crocker Homemaker Award her senior year in high school? Only her family referred to it as the "Betty Crocker Home Wrecker Award". Her Mother