Kitchen Klutz

At one point in my life I was a little obsessed with seeing what food National Holiday it was on a particular day. I always had a dream of eating the "food of the day" each day for an entire month. It got so bad that people actually asked me what today's food was and I was able to tell them most the time.... I am glad I have moved on from that sad time in my life. Anyways, I was so excited when I found out that each day had a National What To Eat On This Day food so, of course, I looked for my birthday food. I was so excited to see what it was and see if it was something that I absolutely loved. I looked it up and scrolled down and my eyes got a little teary when I saw: "June 13: National Kitchen Klutzes of America Day". WHAT?!?!?! I don't even get a food?!?!? No, I get Kitchen Klutz. Of course.

Thinking a little more about this, I concluded that somehow God knew to give me this day because it is SO appropriate for my life. I am remembered of this EVERY time I cook. After disaster strikes, I have to remind myself that God has given me the food holiday of Kitchen Klutz. It is my destiny to be a Kitchen Klutz. Well, if it's one nickname out of all of them that I have lived up to, it's that one. I won't tell all my sad cooking stories because that would make me look like less of a woman, incompetent,  incapable and just plain dumb (not to mention I can't even remember all of them). Let's start out with a not so bad one. I had just moved back to College Station to start my big girl job and one evening I decided to make pasta. I had just got all new pots and pans, plates, utensils, etc. I turned on the stove and put my brand new red pot with water in it on the stove to boil. It was there for no longer than a minute and the stove top started emitting this black thick smoke. Then a small fire was coming up from the bottom of the pot! I immediately turned off the stove and grabbed the pot to take it over to the sink. The fire had gone out, but I looked at the bottom of the pot and the sticker that covered the entire bottom was singed on all the edges and almost completely burnt off. Awesome. The next story I want to tell you happened during my health kick stage in my life. I wanted to make healthy chocolate chip cookie dough. You make this with garbanzo beans, Splenda, peanut butter and a few chocolate chips. I didn't have a food processor and my older sister had just got married and got one from her registry so I called her up to see if I could borrow it. I went over there with my ingredients to make exactly one batch and started dumping all the ingredients into the food processor. I was so excited to see how it would come out. I switched on the processor and stopped after 20 seconds. I looked through the clear plastic container and saw some large white chunks of something in the mixture. I took the lid off and, lo and behold, the food processor blade had been covered in a white thick plastic, part of the packaging since it was brand new. My 'cookie dough' was filled with little plastic chunks scattered everywhere. Awesome. The next cooking, if you can call it that, experience I remember, I was making a meal for my workout friends. I wanted to make some healthy pancakes and I found a recipe for pumpkin protein pancakes. Yum. It consists of egg whites, pumpkin and protein powder. Well I made them and the consistency was all wrong so I added some flour to thicken them up a bit. I put them on the griddle and cooked them. I tasted one and it tasted like pure protein powder in a solid round form. My guests, Annlouise especially, were NOT impressed. Oh well, I bought some fruit too so that's what we had for dinner. Awesome. One of my favorite 'cooking' stories of mine is the one where I made a Thanksgiving dish for my church home group pot luck. I wanted to make stuffing (some call it dressing). The recipe seemed pretty simple so I went out and bought all the ingredients. I got back to my place and started slicing and dicing. I came to the part where it called for 2 cloves of garlic. I had never cooked with garlic before so I bought two, what I thought were cloves of garlic:

One

 

Two 

I thought to myself, well I guess garlic isn't very strong since I need two of these. I go to peel them and start cutting them into tiny pieces. I put the entire first one in and then I decide that half of the second one would be plenty. I put it in the oven and let it bake. It looked amazing when it came out of the oven! Finally, success with cooking. I tried some of the stuffing and wow, that was some garlicy stuff, BUT that is what the recipe called for so I headed over to the home group party. Apparently no one likes that much garlic because I came home with most of it. My chef friend, Annlousie, explained to me that a clove is one of the little parts of the entire garlic head, and that garlic was plenty strong. Awesome. My latest attempt to make something went, by far, the worst of all my experiences. See below:

This was meant to be a spinach frittata. It ended up being all over the stove and a pan. You were supposed to put the mixture in a skillet and turn the knob on medium heat for 5 minutes or until the bottom is cooked (HOW CAN YOU TELL IF IT'S THE BOTTOM, IDIOT?) So I put it on there for 8 minutes, just to be safe. The edges were cooked so the recipe said to get a large flat pan to flip the frittata onto and let it slide back onto the skillet so the other side could get cooked.  The picture is what happened after the flipping took place. Times like this I wish we had an electric flat top stove... Seconds after this happened I let my anger out on my boyfriend, Mike, who was 1,200 miles away and had no idea I was trying to cook. Who else are you supposed to yell at and get mad at when you do something stupid? I sent him a mean text saying (leaving out a few choice words), "That's just too bad if you want me to cook for you. Find a new girlfriend that can if it's a requirement for you." I was so upset at this point because I was trying to get better at cooking so I could cook for him. I know he would like me to cook more and to make things that taste good, or at least that are edible. He just needs to understand the underlying truth. I was brought into this world on Kitchen Klutzes of America Day. Not one of the other 364 days. Not Butterscotch Brownie day, not Buttermilk Biscuit Day, not Escargot Day (Gross, sorry mom, your b-day!), not even the two days in between my birthday (Peanut Butter Cookie Day and Strawberry Shortcake Day). If we all come to realize and accept this, everyone will be a lot happier and there won't be any more outbursts from me. Who knows, the next outburst could be aimed at you.