Well, it’s no surprise
to those of you who know me that I constantly live through blog moments. Yeah,
Duh! Anyway, this blog moment made this
week’s Butterscotch Martini Girls Blab, and I thought maybe you would like to
see the blog on it, in addition to the BMG’s talking about Hilarious Cooking
Disasters. So after you read this story,
pour yourself a cup o’ Joe and hit this link to go to the BMG blab on cooking
disasters. There are some damn funny
stories in there.
I can’t wait to get my invite to Dani Petrone’s next dinner party…now, that girl knows how to liven things up!
Anyway, I have a very
sweet friend back in Tennessee (Hi, Jake!) who once sent me a wonderful and
sweet gift—just for absolutely no reason at all. (Best kind of friend to have,
huh?) Well, this very thoughtful gift was a jar of pickled beets and a package
of sweet cream butter. Can you say YUUUUUM? I have a tremendous love for both of
those items and the fact that they came from an Amish market makes them fabulous!!!
(Please hear this last word with the Joanne Worley warble, will ya?) Because they are. Just sayin…
As many of you already
know, I’m not exactly your basic domestic goddess. Goddess? YES. Domestic? HELL NO! LMAO (Hey,
it’s my story…I get to tell it any way I want.)
So, as I was saying, I get
a delivery with this fabulous sweet cream butter and pickled beets in the mail,
and I’m dying to taste it. No
problem. Crack the jar open an plop a
pickled beet in your mouth…then...mmmmm and aaaahhhh. YUMMY!!!
Now for the butter. Uh-oh…I’m dying to taste it, but I don’t have
any bread. I’m certainly not above sitting down with the hunk of butter and a
spoon, but everyone knows butter is best on hot bread. That’s a no-brainer. So I make a mental note to stop at the store
on my way home from the drugstore the next evening. Then I promptly forget. So I
get home the next night empty handed and get up the next morning all set to try
out my new butter…and no bread. Dammit! Okay, I got this…time to get creative. I can do out of the box thinking. A little brain power and I’ll be rolling
that yummy, warm, melted butter on my tongue along with some hot bread. Mmmmmmmmm!
So I start slamming
through every cupboard in the kitchen and finally fix on a small (old) box of
Bisquick in the back of the refrigerator. Bisquick doesn’t go bad, right?
Nah…my mouth is watering like a Bullmastiff on crack. So I whip out a mixing
bowl and a gallon of milk, and I mix up just enough batter for 2 biscuits. Seriously, I only needed one, but I wanted
five…so I settled on two. Anyway, I mix up some batter and it’s just slightly odd
looking. But what the hell, no bugs.
That’s a bonus, right? I’m not a ‘fraidy
cat, so it’s all systems “Go”. I’m going
to cook up a couple of fried eggs…one of my very few specialties…make some
biscuits, and slather on a pound of sweet cream butter made by the Amish. The Bullmastiff routine continues.
…and this is where
things started to go horribly wrong…
I had pre-heated the
oven to 450 degrees (well, close enough). But I have this little problem that I
don’t cook enough to warrant fixing…at least, not right away. The handle to my oven door fell off a couple
of years before and I stashed it away to replace it later. Then the brackets fell off and I stashed them
someplace else…because I couldn’t remember where I’d stashed the handle. Now I’ve found the handle and can’t remember
where the brackets are. Crap!
Anyway, I have no
handle on the oven door. So I use a
potholder (for protection and traction) and a big ‘ol screwdriver to pry the
door open. I know…I know…two screws and a little elbow grease, and the handle
goes back in place—and I will whenever I find the damn brackets. Anyway, in the
meantime, the potholder and screwdriver work just fine for the small amount of
cooking I do (none, actually), especially when I have a slab of Amish butter
calling my name. Besides, I’m not going
to use my hands and store-bought nails to pry that damn oven door open. I tried that once and actually set my nails
on fire…not risking that again!
So, after all the energy
I expend prying the door open, I’m not gonna keep doing that every few minutes. Why not stick something in the opening to
keep the oven door from slamming all the way shut…makes it much easier to open
the next time. So I dig through the drawer for something long and sturdy enough
to stick in the opening and keep the oven door propped open just a bit without
snapping in two. Won’t take much, just an
inch or two at the most. After all, it’s not rocket science, just common sense.
Voile…I come up with a nice, sturdy wooden spoon. Purrrrrfect!
Now the door’s propped
open, the biscuits are baking, and I’ve cooked up two absolutely perfect over
medium eggs—runny yolks, no lacy brown edges, no snotty whites—sheer perfection!
So I flip ‘em onto a plate and put a bowl over ‘em so they stay hot until the
biscuits are ready in about two minutes. Well, ten minutes later, the biscuits are
done in the middle, but they haven’t risen and they’re still white, and
starting to form a crust. Oops! Time for more creative thinking.
So I crank the dial all
the way up to BROIL and leave the door propped open with the wooden spoon…because
that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Right? Then I walk away and…yep…I
forget all about the biscuits. (Forget everything you ever heard about growing
old gracefully, and plan to cut your birthday cake with a chainsaw. Old age is not
for sissies!)
Soon I smell that
sickly burnt smell coming from my oven.
Yikes! I rush to the oven, grab
the handle of the wooden spoon and flip the door open. Holy crap, Batman! The spoon
is on fire! How did that happen? I’ve got two inches of flame leaping off the
end of the damn spoon. I’m so mesmerized
by the flame that all I can do is stare at it stupidly. I can’t get wood on a
campfire to light without gas, to save my stinkin’ life. But prop open the oven
door with a wooden spoon and poof…FIRE! How the hell is that fair?
So I come to my senses
and try to extinguish the blaze by shaking the spoon. Nope, now I’ve just fanned it into a four-inch
flame. Never fear…I know what to do. I
turn around and pitch the spoon across the length of my kitchen, hoping to hit
the sink. Seriously? Now, mind you, I have hit what I was aiming
at with a thrown object maybe twice in my entire life. However, they say God takes care of kids and
fools. So he must have been standing in
my kitchen laughing his ass off at this fool because he kept me from burning my house to
the ground by guiding that damn spoon straight into the soapy dish water in the
sink. Score!
Flame extinguished, I
grab the pan with the oven mitt and remove two perfectly acceptable looking
biscuits. (Smiley face) Obviously the
smoke filling the kitchen was from the flaming spoon. Right? Woo hoo!
So I pry the biscuits from
the pan, dropping them onto the plate with a bit more “thunk” than I like. I
saw them in half with a knife made for gutting fish, and I slather on a good
portion of sweet cream butter. I am determined!
I add the eggs to the plate, I sit, I cut the eggs, I take a bite of the
eggs and follow it up with a much anticipated bite of biscuit/butter. Yum? No—YUCK!!
Guess Bisquick can go
bad. Who knew? Apparently, a year or two in the fridge is too
long.
In the end, I ate the eggs
cold and scraped the melted butter off the top of the biscuits with a spoon and tried to eat it. Unfortunately, the butter tasted much like the burnt spoon smelled. Shocker! Anyway, let’s just say without
that gift of butter, I might be living on a steady diet of fried eggs…because I
damn sure can’t make biscuits. So what I
really need is for someone to come to my house and cook for me—working on my
next gift. I’ll let ya know how it turns out.
That’s my story and
I’m stickin’ to it. Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!
Love ya,
Kayce
