So Much For My Happy Ending

I have once again failed miserably at baking. This time, it didn't even involve a microwave or an oven. At work sometimes against the wishes of my boss, on slow days, I scour the Internet for interesting blogs. I have a few I visit regularly as seen on the right side panel of my blog layout. Mostly all these just inspire me to be a craftier more bohemian house wife. Most of blogs are craft and cooking blogs. You know the type of blog that is in fad now. Where these housewives and mothers of toddlers in adorable tutus and home made shirts and bowties find these recipes and post their experiences with them. They start out with a tantalizing picture of a delicious dessert. They catch your eye and then document their baking by taking pictures along the way from gathering the ingredients to the finished product. This is almost always followed by their adorable child in a monogrammed bib stuffing their toothless chubby face into the desert after their meal of homemade Macaroni and beanie weanies. The recipe of which came from their cyber friend's creative blog on how to get your j. Crew toddler to eat healthy.


With that being said, I am obsessed with these blogs. It is like a train wreck or a fight in the hallway at school. I know only bad things can result from looking at them but I just want more! Today at school I was looking at smashed peas and carrots and found a delicious pie. It is called a Banofee. From what I gathered it is an english dessert. This pie has graham crackers, bananas, dulce de leche (eagle brand), whip cream and chocolate. Sounds good right? Yeah if you are a master chef and can make things like this. So I saw this recipe and thought "how amazing does this sound." On my way home from work, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner (don't worry, it was chicken broth and the soup mix was in a plastic bag). While at the story and seeing the lovely bananas, I decided to make Will a dessert for all of his hard work this week with the church garage sale. WHY!?!?!? Why do I always think these things can turn out good??? So I buy all of the ingredients and come home. Oh wait! What did you say Will? We are going up to the activity center and I will need to cook there? Ok, I can do this. I will redeem my cooking reputation. Afterall, this recipe does not include an oven. So after I cook boil dinner. I start in on the pie. I put in the eagle brand to boil, I cut the bananas, I mash the graham crackers, I follow the recipe to the best of my ability. Two hours later the pie is done. Apparently I did not wait long enough for my pie to cool because my whip cream has melted, my crust is chunky because I did not mash it enough, and the pie is more like soup. It did everything BUT set up properly. It was banana and eagle brand soup. Moral of the story.... I should have gone with the banana pudding. So I ate some of it, I think if I didn't have the patience of a small dog then it would have turned out a little better. But I felt sick after I ate it. I'm not sure if it was the food or the severe let down of yet another cooking failure. Maybe some unsuspecting victim will eat it today at the garage sale.

When we got home after the garage sale, I plop into bed and Will climbs in next to me. I gaze into his eyes and say pitifully, "I am sorry that I am not going to be a good housewife and that our children will be embarassed by my cooking." To be honest I really want and would love to be one of those cool moms. One of those moms that sews clothes for their kiddos and is always baking and cooking something new for their family to try. When the kids get older, they bring friends home and I always have home made cookies and milk waiting for them. I would enjoy being the stay at home mom that makes fun lunches, bakes deserts with her kids and makes dinner for dad while he is playing with his children in the back yard. I came to a realization today. As much as I try to perfect this inability before I become a mom, I will not be the blogging crafty mom but I will be the mom on the Totino's Pizza roll commercial that pulls out microwaved processed foods for her kids to eat when they come rollerblading home from school with their pack of friends. So after I sincerely apologize for my shortcomings Will lovingly said, "yeah, when we have kids and I come home from work they are going to stare at me and say Dad, we need cookies for our class tomorrow. And you will pipe up, hey why didnt you ask me? and they will reply something to the effect of because we didn't want charcoal. and then he sweetly said, "I knew it before I married you. We will work on it. We will work on it together. I'll teach you my ways grasshopper." kissed me on the forehead tucked me into bed. Ok, I added the grasshopper part.

I Don't Dance

...or bake.

Whenever I cook the following things happen:
-food burns
-smoke alarms go off
-an extreme mess is made
-cute fireman rookies get a call from my address
-I scream
-Will retreats to the living room to drown out the moans and agony with Madden

Tonight was no different. There is a good story circulating the youth group about the one time I baked....yes baked slice and bake cookies. And by baked, I mean completely destroyed and burned. This evening in particular at small groups last year I was baking cookies for the teens that occupied my house. After serving them a delicious meal I popped in a few slice and bake cookies, turned on the oven and left the kitchen. I went into the office and began to get sucked into the cyber world of facebook or wedding blogs or something blackholish like that. All of the sudden, I smell something and came darting out of the office, around the teenagers and leap toward the oven to be greeted by smoke and charcoal. I have unfortunetly burned the teens' dessert. But have no fear, we had more left. So I pop those in, return to my computer and do THE EXACT SAME THING. In about 16 minutes I leap out of my chair, out the double doors into the living room shouting "DANG IT!"as I hurdle over feet, chairs and cups into the kitchen to have burnt the second batch. I now have a very bad reputation with the teens for anything of the bakery persuasion.

Tonight, March 16th was no different. See baking and I are like sewing and I or snowboarding and I. There are few things in life that I forget the pain of their occurance and continually retry them. Thinking that by some miracle my skills with these particular activities will improve. Snowboarding is one of them. It always looks so fun. I always remember it being fun. But by the time I get the boots on, the board on my foot, up the ski lift, off the ski lift, other boot in the binding and down about two feet until my first fall do I remember the actual pain that it is and how unenjoyable it really is to snowboard. So I pathetically slide on my rump all the way down the slope enviously looking at all the happy skiers going swiftly past me. Sewing is another one of these. Each time I step foot into JoAnns I think, I could do that. I can make that skirt. I shall try. And then it turns out disasterous and I cry. The seams don't turn out right, the zippers dont match, I didn't buy enough fabric, etc. Baking is among these activities...example...tonight.

I had successfully baked a batch of brownies for my cast a few weeks ago and got rave reviews on my good friend Betty Crocker. We are getting ready to leave for competition so I decided to create goodie bags for them.

example:

I wanted to add some home made treats for them for the road. So tonight after church I decided to make cookies and brownies for them to put in their tins. I get out all of my ingredients. I choose the chocolate chip cookies first. How hard is that to screw up? I crack my egg, I get a bowl out to melt my butter. I place a half stick of butter in the small bowl and microwave it approx. 20-30 seconds. I open up the microwave and grab the bowl. HOLY SHOOT A MONKEY it was hot. So at this precise moment I touch it, scream, the door opens, a mom from church walks in, I drop the bowl, melted butter goes EVERYWHERE...on the floor, cabinet fronts, cabinet tops, my favorite pair of jeans and around the corner sprints Wanda tenderly yelling "ARE YOU OK!?!?" By this point I am laughing hestarically. Mostly because I am very embarassed. She walks around and sees that I have put a metal..yes metal dish in the microwave. Apparently when you do that your dish gets beyond hot and cracks. She then says "Babe, you put a metal dish in the microwave...what are you trying to do?" I reply meekly "bake cookies." So through many giggles she helps me clean the excessive amounts of butter that now covers the kitchen floor and I get a glass dish to restart my baking with. EMBARRASING! So not only have I given proof to the teens of my inability to cook, I now have shown the parents as well. Great. Oh and did I mention my kitchen looked like this when she walked in. 

Also, did I mention I'm like backed up completely to the other side of the kitchen to get the severity of the mess. I successfully bake these cookies and brownies. 

I hope we break a leg and they better fully enjoy every inch of those cookies and brownies. 

And please do not comment on the amount of misspelled words there are. It is late, I've had a very hard day baking and I can not figure out how to get my spell check to work. Nor do I care to. Good Night. 

We Are Who We Are

Last Thursday Will and his 604 roommates from college went out to Sanderson for a guys weekend. I went hunting with Christin...and by hunting I mean hunting for bargains on Grapevine Main at Blessed Boutique and Red Shed Antiques. One thing I have learned is when Will goes out of town he comes back with a surprise. Such a lucky girl. First my "surprise" was going to arrive on Thursday when I came home from rehearsal, after he had just left. Then it got postponed until Sunday night. Then again until Monday and finally it came yesterday. Guess what it was? Edible Arrangement #2! A little smaller this time. We are on a romantic budget.

It was full of grapes, chocolate apples, bananas and strawberries! I love fruit! But there is more to this story. He pulls it out of the fridge when I get home last night. I get all lovey dovey thanking him for being such a sweet and thoughtful husband. I was just relishing in his romantic antics. I put it on the counter and notice a small rip in the cellophane. 

Will: "Yeah I kind of tested it out. I was hungry" 

Me:  "You ate my surprise?!"

Will: "And you will be proud. I searched the internet and found a coupon for it. So I saved some money." 

Me: "You used a coupon on my surprise?!   You used a coupon AND you ate half my surprise???"

Will: "You CAN NOT blog about this."

Oh yes I will. This is too good not to put on the cyber world for the two followers to read. 

Things not to say after you give your wife/girlfriend/love of your life/best friend/boyfriend/novia/novio/significant other after giving her a gift. You got to love him though. You just have to love him.