Results tagged “cooking”

I am an awful cook.  For real.  I can burn ramen, I have the power.  When the fella and I started dating, I was very up front about this.  Luck would have it, he loves to cook so I didn't have to worry...

Until he started leaving for the summer.  AKA left me to STARVE for 4 months. 

So I've had to learn and it turns out, I find the act of cooking rather enjoyable.  However, I still pretty much suck at it. 

No, I'm not suddenly turning into a cooking blog, but I had to share this video I came across from rouxbe.com. One of my favorite things to whip up is chicken marsala.  It's really easy and one of my favorite dishes, but for the life of me I can't get the pan searing thing down.  My chicken always sticks. ALWAYS. 

Turns out, I'm just not heating the pan properly.  Check out this awesome little trick that I was completely unaware of. 

Rouxbe Online Cooking School & Video Recipes

You ever have one of those days where you literally begin to question your own sanity?  Literally.

Monday started off innocently enough and with the best of intentions.  Since I found out I wouldn't be working next month like I thought I was, I realized I can't waste a single second moping around. 

I hopped in the shower determined to start my day.  I turned up the radio, washed my hair, soaped up my (brand new) poof and I swear I even thought to myself, "I love new poofs, my old one was falling apart".

And just like that, in slow motion even, it began to unravel. Never in all my years of using a poof has one ever fallen apart in my hands.  Have you ever seen a broken poof?  Dude! They're like 5 feet long. 

So there I am, all lathered up and trying not to slip on my poof tail.  I figure I can get crafty right there in the shower and put it back together.  If I wasn't, y'know, in the shower and all, I would have documented the wrestling match on film.  Because that's what it was...a wrestling match. I expected the thing to keep growing like a horror movie and eventually the fella would return to find me laying naked in the tub, lathered up and strangled to death by a poof.

And to think, that was just like...10 minutes of my day.

Finally, all clean and poof free, I have a great thought.  I should make dinner for everyone!  I've never been much of a cook but lately I've gotten a little brave.  I even made scallop potatoes and they didn't come from a box!  Seriously, they even tasted right!  I'm so awesome.

As I head to the kitchen to search out ingredients and plan the night's feast, I realize I want brownies. I haven't baked in years and I can totally make those (out of the box, I'm not that crazy).  I then pull some chicken out of the freezer, look up a lemon chicken meal on the good ol' internets, check that I have everything and go to the grocery store for what I'm missing (lemons and brownie mix).

The chicken breasts I pulled from the freezer (which are now safely hidden in the stove so the cats can't get them) are those big fat ones.  I know I have to cut them in half (I believe the fancy term is to "butterfly" them) and my knives suck so I decide to do it when they're still half frozen.  I do so, put them back in their hiding place and begin to prepare the brownies. 

I crack the eggs, pour in the water and oil (wow I don't remember so much oil going in brownies), preheat the oven, mix up the batter and beat all those little powder lumps to a pulp (man I hate those), lay it all in a pan and go to put it in the oven.

The oven.  That's preheating.  With my beautifully "butterflied" chicken defrosting on a plate. 

FUCK!

Seriously?  Did I really just do that?  Maybe I can still save them.  Oh look, the tops are still frozen. Yay! They're safe and....wait. 

Nope, they're totally cooked on the bottom and sitting in a pool of their own defrosted sludge. 

Awesome.

Well at least I have some brownies baking!  And they'll be done in like 30 minutes!

1 hour later...still goopy.  Hmm, perhaps I need to crank the oven.

1.5 hours later....Really? Still goopy? Huh.

2 hours later....okay what the fuck is going on here?

Finally I give in and decide that the brownies can be a little gooey and I just don't care anymore.  Nothing else could possibly go wrong. 

Except now I'm out of chicken.  I call brother Gypsy and beg him to please pick some up on the way home. He asks if I need anything I else. Nope, all set. I swear.

5 minutes later I call and ask him to pick up some flour. I swear we had some.  Sorry I didn't get it when I was out.  5 minutes later I call and ask if he'll pick up some rice. I'm so sorry!  5 minutes later I call and ask him to snag me a brain while he's at it because I guess my poof ate mine.

Yada yada yada,  I make the chicken.  It's awesome. I'm telling you, AWESOME!  I finally learned how to get a golden crust to stick to it and it's delicious.  I throw it in the oven to stay warm while I make the sauce.  I've totally made sauce before so no biggy.

This is where all you cooks mumble "sauces can be tricky" like everyone I've told this story to has.  Yeah, I get it, information that would have been useful before.

I'll just tell you this,  we now fondly refer to the sauce as "vomit sauce".  I chucked the bad batch and started a second on...equally vomity.  Thank goodness I have forgiving boys living with me.

In the end, I dumped a bunch of condiments on the table (salad dressings, soy sauce, etc), removed the delicious chicken from the oven, laid it on a bed of rice and said "have at it".  Turns out italian dressing worked better than the vomit sauce anyway. 

So it was a helluva a day.  At that point I just wanted to eat my dinner and have a fuckin' brownie.  Yes, they were gooey but with the "vomit sauce" after taste still lingering,  the fudgier the better. 

We enjoyed our desert, did the dishes, watched TV and went to bed because the fella had to work at 8am.

However, the carbon monoxide detector decided a 2am wake up call was best. 

Because after I removed the warming chicken...I LEFT THE FUCKING GAS STOVE ON!

When the fella and I started dating, one of the first things I told him was:

"I do not cook."

He responded "That's okay, I do."  Then suddenly I had images in my head of us living together happily ever after because FINALLY I had found someone who wouldn't let me starve. Priorities people.

You might be thinking "But Ry, he's been gone since May, not to return until August! Whatever will you do?" 

Trust me, the day he left I was like "Of course I'll miss you!  I'm going to freakin' starve for the next 4 months!  WAIT! Think this over!"  and he was all "Eat my dust!" and I was all "It tastes like Ramen!"

And it did. I ate Ramen more than a couple times a week for the month of May.  Hey, atleast I was eating.  I could have been lying on the kitchen floor crying "Why? WHY!" while eyeballing the cat food.

Part of my problem is that I am incredibly impatient and a mega-multitasker.  MEGA. Like, while I'm writing this blog I'm re-heating my coffee (cause otherwise I'd stare at the microwave waiting) and in between thoughts I'm working on my drawing project.

Plus, I only cook when I'm starving.  I sit here and procrastinate until it's too late and it's either cook or eat my foot.  Considering I walk barefoot in a house that 2 men and 2 cats also inhabit, I figure cooking FTW.

So I've had to improvise a little and come up with a couple of surefire 10 minute 'recipes' that I can easily multitask into my day and eat freakin' right away or someone's going to get hurt.  Seriously, I'm still learning how to use this knife!

oh, before i go on, i meant to take a picture of the recipe you're about to laugh your way through, but i totally forgot because i was HUNGRY.  so instead you get a picture of my chipped plate.