Confessions of a Inept Cook...

Well, if you are curious about what Darcy was up to one year ago, yesterday, right this very moment, AND will be up to tomorrow, you should check out the newest post on her blog and have all those questions answered in just a few short paragraphs! She also included a photo of what she and I made for supper last night. If I do say so myself, we were pretty impressive in the kitchen! (For those of you who do not know me in real life, I am SO culinarily challenged! My best friend recently remarked, "EVERYTIME we are invited to supper at Monica's house, we either have BBQ chicken wings or spaghetti!" That was a totally unfair observation! We have had Pappa Murphy's pizza SEVERAL times!!! But, really, she is right. I cook BBQ chicken wings (a mean batch, at that!) and Grant makes the best spaghetti I have ever tasted. We pretty much live on Spaghetti and variations thereof around here. (There is goulash...that is spaghetti with shells instead of spaghetti. There is chilli...that is spaghetti with beans instead of spaghetti. There is sloppy joes...that is leftover spaghetti without shells, spaghetti, or beans, BUT it is served up on a bun!) That covers about 26 days out of each month...the rest of the time we have BBQ chicken wings! OH!..and Grant DID teach me how to fry up pork chops early in our marriage, so we have had those often over the past 16 years, too. (Before marrying Grant, I had NEVER bought any sort of uncooked meat except hamburger. I wouldn't have known what to do with it after getting it home, so why buy it!...well, ACTUALLY, I DID buy a chopped up chicken once. I was going to impress Grant and cook him fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy like my mother used to cook. I thought, "How hard can it be, anyway?" So, the night before the big event, I asked all the other nurses at work to tell me how to fry a chicken and make mashed potatoes and gravy. They all were enthusiastic in sharing their favorite methods with me and I diligently wrote down each and every detail. The next day, I brought all the ingredients over to Grant's house where I was going to cook up this wonderful home-made feast. I don't remember now why Melvin was there, too...but, for some reason this other guy from our Sunday School class came over for Sunday dinner at Grant's house, too. While Grant and Melvin visited in the living room, I dove into the preparation of that meal with such eager anticipation and bright eyed optimism. What a horrid day it turned out to be! First of all, my potatoes were runnier than the gravy! (Well, not quite...but almost!) And the gravy was lumpy and tasted suspiciously similar to elmer's glue. The chicken looked pretty decent, though. That is until we actually started EATING it! Under it's deceptively brown, crispy coating the chicken was appallingly pink. (Mind you, I was serving this to the man who liked his meat CHARRED BLACK through and through...the fellow I wanted with all my heart to snag as my husband!) Well, fortunately for me, both fellas were interested in me (let me say here, Melvin wasn't even in the RUNNING, but he didn't realize that, yet) (let me also explain, this was 18 years ago...I wasn't nearly as scary looking back then!). I immediately declared the meal unedible and begged the two fellas NOT to eat it, but, driven by male competitiveness, I suppose, they both insisted it was great and chowed down like there wouldn't be any tomorrow. Imagine my GUILT when about an hour later all three of us became violently ill with food poisoning! I never saw Melvin again...hope he recovered. Grant, meanwhile, continues to this day to steadfastly deny it was FOOD poisoning. He thinks we all just succomb to the same virus at the same moment...yeah...right!

Anyway, explaining all that, probably helps you understand why Grant has not objected to living on spaghetti (that HE cooks, by the way) for the last 16 years of our marriage. Lately, though, I've been feeling a bit guilty over my cooking shortcomings and decided I really should introduce a bit more variety in our diet. Enter my new hero, Rachael Ray! I had never seen her show until a few weeks ago...but, I was HOOKED from the very first show. Now, mind you, my TV viewing is quite limited. Grant and I watch "Everyone Loves Raymond" reruns almost every night at 10:30pm. Though my family teases me mercilessly about "watching Oprah", I actually only watch her show once or twice a month...and seldom the entire show, at that. That's it...the total extent of my television viewing, until just a couple of weeks ago when I discovered the Rachael Ray show! Now, I have been turning her show on each morning while I torture myself on the gazelle glider (in the name of weight loss!). There have been a number of recipes she has made on the show that have caught my interest, but I hadn't yet gotten up the nerve to actually TRY one. I mean, I have CHILDREN to think about now. It is one thing to almost do in two potential suiters and quite another thing to risk poisoning one's own children!

Then, yesterday, I splurged and BOUGHT a Rachael Ray cookbook. I decided to attempt a Carbonara Pizza. Though, I had to substitute a few things I have never heard of before with more familiar ingredients. Darcy and I teamed up to make this pizza. Now, you also have to understand that I am horrible about doing joint projects (just ask my mother, or my best friend, or my husband (who is my best, best friend)). I am very picky. It drives me nuts working with other people, because they just don't do things exactly the way I would want them done! (Actually, MY HUSBAND is a VERY METICULOUS person and I don't mind his help in projects...but he is the only one I have run across that doesn't drive me insane to work with.) (Which is why, seven years after building our house, our woodwork is still raw. I keep putting off staining and sealing it, but I won't let anyone else do it for me...well, I would let GRANT, but he hasn't offered...he's too busy cooking all the meals! In my defense, though, I DID get the door knobs installed on all our inside doors a couple of years ago...so, it isn't like no progress at all has been made in the last seven years!) My whole point, though, is that I was pleasantly surprised to discover what fine team my eldest daughter and I make. She didn't drive me crazy at all! And we worked together like a well oiled pit crew! We whipped that pizza out in very respectable time and, most amazing of all(!), it was DELICIOUS!!! The kids liked it so well that all three of them requested the leftover pieces for breakfast this morning. (I tried to give them spaghetti...)

(Oh, if you need PROOF that something other than a sphaghetti variation was served at our house last night, click onto Darcy's blog! She posted a photo!) (Actually, spaghetti is one of my most favorite meals in all the world...and Grant lived on spaghetti in his bachelor days (when he wasn't eating tainted fried chicken to try and impress me)...and spaghetti is a favorite of all three of the kids. So, I don't mean to give spaghetti a bad rap here!)