Saint Gemini the Devout

We have a nifty double oven. It's a Maytag Gemini that fits in the same space as a regular stove. You lose the pots & pans storage drawer, but you gain and extra oven - it's awesome!

Anywho, it is also very devout in following religious fasting practices.

Hubby was re-setting the time on the stove for the end of Daylight Savings time and this is what we expected: 9:37

Instead we got this: SABB ATH

None of the buttons on the stove would work. Not the cancel button, not the clock button, not the number buttons, NOTHING.

We needed the manual.

NOW!

This "Sabbath" mode would stay in effect for 72 hours. The oven would not turn on for 72 hours. This struck fear in the heart of Hubby. What do you mean no oven for 72 hours?

Back to the manual.

NOW!

If you push the "Clock" button for three seconds, the "Sabbath" mode would be cancelled.

Hubby jammed his thumb on the button for three seconds. The display started blinking and the time came back.

Woot! Woot!

A heathen dance was performed in the kitchen.

Then there was a beep.

And the display switched back to "Sabbath" again.

Hubby jammed his thumb on the button as hard as he could (I'm surprised it didn't go through the display and into the wall behind the stove). Again, we got blinking. Then, the time.

Now, he went ahead and started the oven. Anything to break the cycle.

The time actually changed by a minute and the oven started warming up.

Ha, HA! Take that!

More heathen dancing ensued.

The disabling the oven for 72 hours to encourage fasting is really a flawed idea. There are soooo many ways to get around it. For example:

• The burners still start.


• We have a microwave.


• We have a ton of cereal.


• Who said Spaghetti-o's had to be heated?


• Hubby's been known to open a can of chicken noodle soup and eat it right out of the can.


• Hello, take-out? We have a drawer full of menus.

I could go on and on, but I'll space you the details.

Hubby pressed cancel on the oven. No sense in wasting energy to warm it up any further.

Beep.

"Sabbath"

We have GOT to stop dancing!


Silver Lining:

1. Hubby finally pushed enough buttons to cause the stove to revert to factory settings. This meant it re-set to 12:00.
   
   And it's going to stay that way for at least an hour. We'll try again when it turns to 1:00.


2. Just in case, I've got three boxes of cereal in the pantry and two gallons of milk in the fridge. Good think I'm prepared for these kinds of emergencies.

Anyone for Pizza?

I didn’t bring my lunch today, nor did I feel like going out. The food drawer at my cube is also empty seeing as how I ate my last pop tart for lunch yesterday. A friend of mine regularly plays trivia in the lunch room so I decided to take my chances with the wheel of death and play a little trivia.

The wheel of death is a vending machine that contains “fresh-ish” lunch type food – salads, sandwiches, square pizza, etc. It’s a frustrating machine.

Sometimes it takes your money, but doesn’t let you open the compartment door.

Sometimes I rotate the food I want to the door, but the machine decides otherwise and will spontaneously turn to some other random compartment (which is usually empty).

Other times, the dang door doesn’t open far enough. I got a salad last week and the door opened about four inches when there was a seven or eight inch salad container to get out.

That sucker was $2.75, there was no way I was letting that door close. The compartment was giving birth to the salad whether it wanted to or not. I yanked it out, slapped it’s bottom, and heard that newborn salad cry as I pulled off the crinkled-up lid.

Today, I decided to go for the square, elementary school pizza. When you put it in the microwave it gets all chewy. I decided I should give the toaster oven a whirl.

I’ve never used a toaster oven in my life.

And there were no instructions near by.

There was a button for pizza. Duh, let’s push that one.

Gee whiz! It started blinking at me. I stared back at it with a blank look on my face. Now what?

Another friend happened to be in the kitchen and came over to help. He had never used it before either, but he was kind enough to point out the “start” button.

I pushed the start button. A blue light came on, but the display continued to blink at me. So I pushed the start button again.

Everything turned off.

Like an idiot I went through this routine three more times. I finally let it blink just to see what happened.

Lo and behold, it started to warm up!

It continued to blink until it hit a desired temperature of 400 degrees, then switched over to timer mode. 20 minutes!!! I don’t cook a frozen pizza at home for that amount of time! It was at this point I realized we had frozen pizza for dinner last night. And my mother-in-law was bringing pizza over for dinner tonight. *sigh*

I pulled open the door after five minutes (the cheese was bubbling) and discovered there weren’t any pot holders or oven mitts around. It was 400 degrees, how the heck was I going to get it out of there?

I got a fork to slide it out onto a plate, but it was stuck to the little pan.

After I singed my knuckle, trying to work a plastic knife between the pizza and the pan, I got a wad of napkins to use as a pot holder.

By the time I extracted my pizza from the pan, the whole dealio had cooled off enough to use my hands. I made my way over to the trivia group, picked up my pizza, and discovered it was chewy.

Next time, I’ll just microwave it.

Silver Lining:

1. The pizza must have been somewhat fresh or I cooked it long enough because I haven’t shown any signs of food poisoning yet.

2. I won’t be craving pizza anytime soon. That’s better for the diet that I re-start every day because I failed the day before.

The Taste That Creates Smiling Eyes

Let’s be frank – the economy is in the crapper. We’ve been tightening our belts despite what the administration wants us to do. It’s bad enough they are using my tax dollars to take care of the messes of other people, but don’t expect me to voluntarily put my own family at risk to “do my part to stimulate the economy” by spending any more than I need to.

I’m done with that soap box. I’ll get back to the real story.

We like to get Chinese take-out on occasion, but since we’re tightening our belts, Hubby’s decided to attempt making his favorite menu items at home.
Some of the ingredients are not found in your average, every day grocery store. Fortunately, there are some Oriental grocery stores in the area. There is an “East Oriental” grocery on Olive Blvd, but the “East East Oriental” grocery was closer to his office.

I guess that naming philosophy is on par with the 1st Baptist Church of X Community. I’ve never seen a 2nd Baptist Church of X Community (although there is/was a 3rd Baptist Church down on Grand Ave). If another Baptist Church is building in the area, it seems they find some way to make it a “1st” Baptist Church. There could be a 1st Baptist Church of X Community, 1st Riverside Baptist Church, and 1st Family of God Baptist Church all within a mile of each other. The important thing is that they are the “First”.

But I digress again.

The variety of rice was almost overwhelming. But the sheer quantity of rice was over the top. There were bags of rice as big as the 25lb Purina Dog Food bags! Everything seemed so bizarre – there were oodles of rice cookers and five pound bags of crushed red pepper (I think the bottle we have in the spice drawer is more than a year old and that’s only one ounce).

One hard to find ingredient was pure rice vinegar. After sweating it a bit, the East East Oriental grocery store did not disappoint. They had one brand of pure rice vinegar. He swears up and down that he did not pick this one out on purpose, but that it was the only one available.

First, I would like to point out the red oval with the “this-is-why-I’m-so-special” wording on it.

“Made from fine Soft Water”: I understand this. Soft water is devoid of pesky minerals that can affect the taste. But, why is soft water capitalized? Is that a brand of water? I have soft water in my house, but I don’t ask my friends if they would like a glass of “Soft Water” like I would if it were a bottle of Aquafina.

“Mild & round vinegar”: This I don’t get. What the hell is “round” vinegar?

Moving on, take a look at the actual bottle:

Now, sound out the name.

All I can say is if it is that good, maybe we shouldn’t keep it in the kitchen.



Silver lining:

1. God Bless my husband for taking our budget seriously. Making it at home is almost always cheaper.


2. We should all take a multi-cultural field trip once in awhile. This experience reminded me of the time I went into a Mexican grocery store, and they had fried pork rinds the size of a small child.

My Mother-In-Law Didn't Want to be the Subject of Monday's Blog . .

. . . so I left her out of it.

Several years ago, Hubby had grilled some pork chops and was saving them for lunch during the week. My mom happened to be in town for a week and I took a week of vacation. Hubby was on call, but at home.

Mom was hungry, started looking in the refrigerator, and found the pork chops. She had hardly taken them out when Hubby practically pounced on them.

“These are for my lunch this week.”

“Well, could you share one with your mother-in-law?”

“No, I made these special for my lunch.”

Pitifully, my mom said, “All I ever wanted was a pork chop.”

Now, any time we can’t have what we want, that phase has a funny way of coming up.



Fast forward to this weekend.

On Friday night, we dropped the kids off at the “Parents Night Out Co-Op”. On the check-in table was a flyer for a great discount at the Brickhouse Bistro, we had nothing better to do, so we decided we would go there for dinner.

Hubby loves their pork chops and was salivating all the way over just thinking about it. We sat down, ordered a couple of beers and briefly looked over the menu. The biggest decision we had to make was what kind of appetizer we were going to get.

Our waitress was ready to take our order. Hubby could hardly wait and blurted out, “The pork chops, please.”

“Oooo, sorry, we’re out of pork chops.”

He was so deflated.

After the waitress left, he said, “All I ever wanted was a pork chop.”

All I have to say is “What goes around, comes around.”

Boy, am I due for a huge kick in the pants because of this blog.

Silver lining:
1. We had a nice dinner without kids constantly needing our attention or climbing all over us.
2. Fortunately, the eating experience this weekend would only get better. Saturday night, no kids (again), Kitaro’s – mmm – mmm – mmm – mmm – mmm!

I'm a Glutton for Punishment

Here I go again – thinking I’m organized enough to whip something up for an event!

A new Bunco group was starting up in New Town and in LI style, I wanted to bring something homemade.

I had just gotten a cookie press for Christmas. It’s super cool because it runs on batteries. The cookie press came with recipes for both cookies and appetizers/crackers.

I make cookies for my other Bunco group, but I didn’t want to do the same thing. So flipping through the recipes, I chose as appetizer called “Gougeres”.

That’s a fancy-schmancy way of saying Basil Cream Puffs! The recipe book even has them titled as Gougeres and in parentheses, Basil Cream Puffs. It’s like the Wilton people putting the recipe book together decided to include Gougeres, but the editor said it was too high faluntin’ when it’s really as simple as Basil Cream Puffs. I’m sure there was a huge outcry by the Julia Child Fan Club about this, and after heavy debate, a compromise was reached. The recipe would be titled “Gougeres (Basil Cream Puffs)”. There, I hope everyone is happy.

This Bunco group is on Thursdays so on Wednesday night I did the responsible thing and fetched all the dry ingredients we had in the kitchen and checked the supply of everything else. I made a tick mark by any ingredients I needed to buy at the grocery store. I wasn’t so responsible as to go out and actually buy these ingredients that same night. I was just going to do it on my way home Thursday.

The grand plan (in this order) was to:
* Bust it out of work right at five
* Stop at the IGA for ingredients
* Pick up the kids at daycare
* Get home & start the oven
* Cook up the dough, pipe the dough onto cookie sheets & throw them in the oven
* Make up the cream cheese spread
* Feed the kids PB&J
* Dig out the centers of the cream puffs & fill with cream cheese spread
* Head off to Bunco at 6:30-ish

Well, I didn’t leave work until almost 5:15. I pulled into the IGA parking lot & got out the recipe (to make sure I got all the tick marks). I needed parchment paper, cream cheese, dried chives, & goat cheese – GOAT CHEESE!?!?!?! Oh, crud! The IGA is good for staples and a decent selection of basic meats, but GOAT CHEESE??

The first three were fairly easy to find. In the cheese section of the dairy department, I found cheddar, American, mozzarella, Gouda, feta. A glimmer of hope rose up, but alas, no goat cheese.

For occasions such as this, I have the New Town Market, Marsalla’s, as a contact in my cell phone. I gave them a quick, frantic call and breathed a sigh of relief – they had goat cheese.

OK, I picked up the kids without incident (by some miracle), got the goat cheese and got straight to work as soon as I got home. The ovens were on and I started preparing the dough (which wasn’t as hard as I was lead to believe). I piped the dough onto cookie sheets, opened the oven to pop them in, but there were no racks!

Rob had cleaned the ovens a couple of nights ago and the racks were still sitting out. Fortunately, that was an easy fix.

Whew, I was in the home stretch. The rest of the process went pretty smoothly and I made it to Bunco just before seven. What an exciting (though time crunchily stressful) couple of hours!

Silver lining:
1. Thank heavens for Marsalla’s Market. They have saved me numerous times before.
2. I have a new recipe to share. Without a stressful time crunch, I would definitely make these again. http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2009/01/gougeres-basil-cream-puffs-herbed.html
3. At Bunco, I met some new people, got to know others better & had a grand time with my friends; new and old.

Time to Make the Cookies

During the trip to the frozen tundra at Thanksgiving, my mom gave me some cookbooks – she’s never been a cook so I’m not sure why she had them in the first place. One of them was about holiday baking and I had a couple of Christmas Cookie Exchange parties to go to and I am the self-proclaimed cookie queen so I was excited to find a new cookie recipe.

There was one in particular that intrigued me, the Molasses Spice Fizz. I like molasses cookies so I decided this was the one. The recipe said it made seven dozen and that was exactly how many I needed for one of my cookie exchanges – perfect! Last time I said that, I had a dessert disaster (see http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2008/11/delightful-peanut-butter-cookie-bars.html). Why would I think this was any different?

Since it had to be refrigerated for at least an hour (for ease of handling – impending disaster clue #1), I made up the dough for the first batch on Wednesday night (after Bible Study – blog coming soon) in order to make them on Thursday. The plan was to make up the dough for a second batch as soon as I got home from work so it could chill while we made cut outs from the first batch.

When I got home, I realized I had forgotten the recipe at work. Crap – If I was going to make another batch, I was going to have to go back out for that (impending disaster clue #2). I also couldn’t remember what temperature the oven was supposed to be at. Rob said he would get started with the girls. Before I left, I told him the one thing I remembered from the recipe – roll the dough out on a well floured surface. He said he would use the flour sifter to make a good coating on the counter.

I got home to him cussing because the dough was sticking to everything! His hands, the rolling pin, the cookie cutters, argh! So much for ease of handling. That was clue #3 – I now had a full blown dessert disaster. Also, when we looked in the bowl, it didn’t look like enough dough for seven dozen cookies. Was I going to have to make a total of three batches???

It was too late to turn back - the dough was made, rolled out and the cookie cutters placed. Using a spatula to move the cookies from the counter to the cookie sheet was the worst. The dough just kind of mushed up on itself. Apparently, sifting enough flour onto the counter so that you can’t see the counter was not enough. I had to scrape the whole thing off the counter & start again using a lot more flour.

I had to send the kids to bed without helping because I was getting so frustrated and I didn’t want to take it out on them. Needless to say, I was not going to put this recipe into the permanent file – I was never going to make these again! Then, I told Rob to call my sister to get my mom’s sugar cookie recipe.

Mom’s sugar cookies went much easier – I knew what to expect. Although my mom thought the recipe would only make 40 to 50 cookies, we ended up with 180! We had those made & frosted within four and a half hours. I was sooooo done with the molasses cookies, we didn’t glaze them until Saturday morning.

I’ve published both recipes in case you’re interested. WARNING - only the truly brave should try the molasses!

http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2008/12/ma-bergs-christmas-cookies.html

http://lifemakesmelaugh.blogspot.com/2008/12/molasses-spice-fizz-cookies.html


Silver lining:

1. We have a double oven so the baking went pretty fast.
2. In the end, (after a glaze frosting & sugar sprinkles) they were quite tasty.
3. Despite my doubts about the recipe making seven dozen, I ended up with 10 ½ dozen cookies.
4. Cookie exchanges are the bomb! Instead of only having one (or two in my case) type of cookie, I have more than a dozen different ones.

Delightful Peanut Butter Cookie Bars

I have made this dessert before with tremendous success. It was sinfully yummy!

There was a “Chili Cook-off” at my office & they were looking side dishes & desserts. The best one got a prize. I thought to myself, what kind of dessert goes good with chili – MY PEANUT BUTTER BARS!!! I had the winning recipe. . .

. . .if only it came out as good as the first time I made it.

The first time I made it, I a single batch and was gobbled up pretty quickly. The dough also fit quite nicely in my average size bar pan. Note: this pan fits in our top oven. Since I was making a dessert for a lot more people, I decided to make a double batch. I had to pull out the BIG bar pan – this sucker is 20 inches long. Note: this pan does NOT fit in the top oven. I cranked on the lower oven, which is bigger and uses more energy to heat up, but it allows more airflow around baked goods so it does a better job overall because you don’t have to up the baking time.

I pulled the cooled cookie dough out of the fridge. It was a little clumpy (should have been my first clue that disaster was going to ensue) and I had to really work it into the pan with my fingers so that it didn’t have any gaps. I ultimately had to use a pizza roller to spread it out into the pan.

I remembered that the last time I made this scrumptious dessert I had to bake the cookie part 17 or 18 minutes; right in the middle of the 15 – 20 minute range. So that’s how long I baked it. After it was finished baking you need to spread some melted peanut butter on top, add a layer of marshmallows, and drizzle on some chocolate syrup. I didn’t have any syrup, but I figured I could add it later.

I tossed it back in the oven sans syrup for another five minutes (per the recipe). After five minutes, the marshmallows were puffy, but most of them hadn’t gotten that nice caramelized color – just a little on the ones in the back. They went back in the oven for another couple of minutes. Still there wasn’t much color.

I was concerned about over-baking (which the recipe specifically tells you not to do) so I pulled it out anyway. It was too late. Four paragraphs ago, I mentioned not having to up the time in the big oven. Hmmmm, yah, forgot about that point. I should have started at 15 minutes and only done the five minute marshmallow thing. The edges looked pretty crusty. Actually, that may have happened no matter what I did considering the consistency of the dough when I put it in the oven.

I muttered something about not having a Crème Brule torch to brown the rest of the marshmallows. Hubby’s eyes lit up. I though he was thinking about the soldering torch he had and about fainted at the thought of that flame hitting a dessert I was bringing to work and seeking a prize!!! He was actually thinking about one of the lighters we had. It’s one of those refillable ones that acts like a mini torch. It was sort of like a Crème Brule torch and I gave him the go ahead.

It didn’t light at first, but finally the pffffffffffffff sound was emitted and Hubby started waving the lighter over the pan. Continuous movement was not working so he started concentrating on smaller areas and lit one of the marshmallows on fire!!! I made him stop, deciding I didn’t want to burn down the house (it was a sizable pan and could have made quite a bonfire in the kitchen) or least of all, present some blackened peanut butter coal to my co-workers.

Before cutting it and putting it on a tray to bring into work, my peanut butter bars had to cool. I was going to a Mary Kay party at my friend Mary’s anyway so I could take care of the “presentation” after I got home. This also gave me an excuse to ask for someone to give me some chocolate syrup.

After the party and at least two glasses of wine (she lives within walking distance so I was not drinking & driving), I was going to add the syrup & cut up the bars.

I added way too much syrup and decided to mop it up with some paper towels. Here’s a tip: Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup does not “mop”, it smears. I guess that took care of anyone noticing the marshmallows were not caramelized. It also hid that burnt marshmallow quite nicely. Ten paper towels later, I was ready to cut.

Now this pan is expensive & Hubby would kill me if I used a knife in it. I used a spatula to cut the first row out & move it to a cutting board. It was C-R-U-N-C-H-Y! The marshmallows were super sticky too. I should have cut the edges off because you could have broken a tooth on them, but I didn’t think of that until after I cut it all up. By then the pieces would have ended up too small to matter so I left them. I easily moved the remaining bar from the pan (because the cookie part was so hard) and proceeded to cut it into squares.

As I was cutting, the marshmallow top started to peel away from the cookie base. I set the “tops” back on and placed them on my tray, covered everything with saran wrap and then had a revelation – the marshmallow was going to stick to the saran wrap! It was too late – I would deal with it before the cook-off.

In the lunchroom, well before the cook-off, I carefully pulled the saran wrap off. It took my fifteen frickin’ minutes as I was gently pealing the marshmallow from the saran wrap and then placing the marshmallow back on top of the cookie – every single one of them.

As I watched my co-workers eat them, everyone would take a bite and the entire marshmallow top came with the first bite - that sticky marshmallow wouldn’t give up to a set of choppers for anything. It was embarrassing.

Needless to say, no one asked for the recipe nor did I win a prize. Phooey!

Silver lining:
1. There weren’t any bars to bring home so it wasn’t a total loss.
2. I may not be expected to ever bring home-made anything into the office again. Everyone will be relieved when I bring in store bought stuff.

I'm Going Crazy, Want to Come Along?

That was my dad's favorite expression when I was growing up. He would have the car keys in his hand and I would ask, "Where are you going?"

The response was usually, "Crazy, want to come along?"

The answer was always yes.

My kids drive me crazy sometimes. Take, for example, a recent dinner at the Covey household . . .

Part of the meal consisted of macaroni & cheese. My husband has gotten both girls hooked on BBQ sauce on their mac-n-cheese (GROSS!) so it is now a standard request. One night, we were out of sauce (DUN-DUN, DUUUUUUUUUN).

Cupie: I want some BBQ sauce.

Me: We don't have any.

Cupie: But I want some.

Me: Didn't you hear me? We don't have any BBQ sauce.

Cupie: BUT I WANT SOME.

This was obviously a lose, lose situation so I did what every good mother should. I ignored her and ate my dinner. Now, don't give me that look of horror! The way I figure it, I didn't throttle her; therefore, I'm a good mom.


Silver lining:
1. I may have broken the BBQ sauce on macaroni & cheese habit.
2. I'm one step closer to the nut house - where I can veg out & sleep all day in a padded room