flop update

The only thing worse than a flop, is having it happen again.

The very next day.

Cooks Illustrated and I are in a fight.

Home, fresh from the grocery, all required ingredients assembled and accounted for, I was so ready to take on the Chicken Enchilada recipe from the new Cooks Illustrated cookbook I mentioned yesterday.

I dutifully mise-en-placed. I read the recipe all the way through. Twice. I tallied up the cook times and counted back from Brad's 6:00 eta and set to work.

At 6:45, the enchiladas were still no where near being done. Either the Cooks Illustrated authors grossly underestimated the time required for simmering chicken to reach 160F, the chicken breasts were abnormally large, or user error was somehow involved (however unlikely that seems, considering the cook).

With the Bean's bed time looming ever closer and our tummies grumbling ever louder, Brad interrupted my inept-cookbook-author/elephantine-chicken defense, took the spatula out of my hands and drove us to Chik-fil-a.

We can have the enchiladas another night.

When I'm done being mad at them.

Click here to read the rest of this post...

Summary only...

flop, near-flop, flop again

It was just that kind of weekend.

Saturday started with the absolutely fabulous third birthday party of our friend Little Man. There were friends, fun, fire trucks (the Bean was in heaven), fire men (mommy was in heaven), pizza and cake: a perfect recipe for fun. But mommy and daddy forgot to combine our sugar-intake-tallies for the Bean as the party progressed, and the day ended in a massive sugar-induced meltdown. Parenting flop.

We regrouped Sunday morning and made it to and home from church with little event, and even managed to have a pretty good time.

This gave me just enough false confidence to take on a long-neglected sewing project: the Bean's dust ruffle for her big girl bed.

I took measurements, I made charts, graphs and diagrams, I cut, I sewed, I pressed, I repeated. And sure enough, in about an hour, I had a rather simple, but perfect little dust ruffle with box pleats. See?

What is that you say? It's not perfect? Oh I see. The box pleats aren't equidistant apart.

And there are seven inches missing up here.

And there are seven extra inches over here. What just happened? But, but, but I made a diagram, see?

There are no misplaced inches or wonky-pleat-distances on my diagram for heaven's sake!

[heavy sigh]

[regroup]

[unsew, re-cut, re-sew, re-press, repeat]

There. That's better.

That too.

Only a sewing near-flop. And when you put the bookcase back, the wonky-pleat-distances aren't so obvious. Unless you're me. Then the asymmetry makes you twitch every time you walk in the room. But that's my own issue. I'll deal. Moving on.

So no matter how emotionally traumatized by dust ruffle asymmetry a mommy is, her family still needs to eat. And when the recipe is from this fabulous new cookbook from Cook's Illustrated, that is alright with me.

And when the recipe is for Chicken Enchiladas, even better! And since I meal-plan



and make exhaustively researched grocery lists



everything is right here and ready to go!!!!

Except the onions. And chili powder. And cilantro.

And part of my soul.

Thank you Brad. And Dominos.

I'm going to bed now.

Click here to read the rest of this post...

Summary only...

chocolate cream pie filling flop

Sweet friends, my capacity for failure is off the charts this weekend.

Brad's feet were barely dry from his run to Walmart in the rain when the pre-made pie crust came out of the oven beautifully. In a flurry of refreshed domestic confidence, I pulled the chocolate cream pie filling out of the fridge to make sure it would be ready when the crust had cooled to find this:

Nope. Not set.

My did-that-really-just-happen? laugh was manic enough to bring Brad out of his study to make sure everything was OK. Which of course it was, because this household is never without instant pudding mix!

The heroes of the day:

And big thank you to Brad for buoying my humor during my current run of baking disasters and to whipped cream for being easy enough that even on a day like today, it just works.

Do I still want to meet my goal of making a great dessert for my family from scratch once a week in an effort to save money and make the experience of sweets in our house more about quality (time, ingredients and flavor) than quantity? Yes, definitely. But what this pie lacks in handmade-osity, it more than makes up for in lessons to my achievement-obsessed personality. May I present my own personal Humble Pie:

Click here to read the rest of this post...

Summary only...

pie crust flop

But the recipe made it sound so easy.

"If you use your food processor to make homemade pie crust, nothing can go wrong!" the recipe whispered in my ear.

Unless your food processor is too small to handle the dough without leaving a giant unincorporated pat of butter to crush the hopes of your taste buds, a-flitter with the dream of homemade chocolate cream pie.

Thank you, God, for Pillsbury pre-made pie crust, a Walmart within spitting distance and a willing husband. Thank you, self, for not tying up self worth with a gloriously flaky homemade pie crust. Not completely, anyway.

Click here to read the rest of this post...

Summary only...