Kerplosh!

It's a new year, it's time for a fresh start. Sort of.

I'm not in the mood to change up all the design of my page right now, so that stays the same.

There have been a ton of changes since I last posted here, but we're mostly the same goofy family.

Still married to Hubby and we still live in Pleasantville.

Stinkles is twelve - participates in the Character Council, Girl Scouts, soccer, school musical, and does college level research projects. She's also a good kid, but that drummer in her head is still playing a death dirge - ugh!

Cupie is fourteen - a soccer goalie, cheerleader, member of the National Junior Honor Society, Girl Scout, active member at church, generally a good kid. But, Dude! She has all the snark and attitude that's uber typical of a fourteen year old!

And she's still as klutzy as ever.

So Hubby and I are sitting in the family room watching Shameless and there is a commotion from the kitchen. Like the kind you hear in Scooby-Doo - ZOINKS!

I tried to jump up from the couch, but we have those electric footrests, and putting them down is slower than the old lady with the stair lift in Gremlins (before the Gremlins get to it). By the time I get to the kitchen, Cupie is still standing there dumbfounded. I think she was shocked because her perfectly prepared bowl of cereal was on the floor amongst the lunch crumbs, a stool, and a rogue sock.

Apparently, her feet were on the stool, she went to get up, tangled her feet in the stool legs and KERPLOSH! Cereal on the floor! That's a direct quote.

I looked at the floor again - there was cereal and a bowl, but no milk splatter. WTH!?!?

The kid puts milk on the cereal, dunks all the cereal pieces, drinks the milk out and then eats the cereal. It's to ensure the cereal doesn't get soggy, just moist (ewe, moist).

Genius!

Silver Lining:

1. I didn't have anyone crying over spilled milk.
2. I didn't have to clean up any spilled milk either.

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.

No Fail Rice Krispies - NOT!

I haven't had a good kitchen calamity in awhile. And it happens to be your lucky day (but definitely not mine).

I've got a kitchen calamity story for you all.

As luck would have it the grandparents called Saturday morning and offered to take the girls on a "Haunted Hayride" about an hour away. We were invited to an "Alley" party - which is like a block party, but takes place in the alley behind our homes. We would bring the kids, but it is really is more fun when you don't have to watch out for small appendages getting too close to a bon-fire. Can you say, "AWESOME!" (all sing-song like) - we could hang out with our neighbors and friends for a few hours and not feel bad because we stuck the kids with a babysitter!

It wasn't until four in the afternoon that I realized we needed to bring some sort of food to the party.

Brownies took an hour.

By the time I pulled together ingredients for cookies and baked them, I'd still be at an hour.

I didn't have an hour. We were planning on being there in 45 minutes.

I found some marshmallows and rice krispies in the pantry. I could tell there weren't going to be enough marshmallows to make a full pan of rice krispie treats. I figured I could just melt the marshmallows and pour in enough rice krispies until the consistency was right.

And I thought I would make up for the lack of quantity with quality. By quality, I meant chocolate. Chocolate chips mixed with marshmallow, butter & rice krispies, where could I go wrong?

Apparently, I could go horribly wrong.

I didn't want to bring over the glass dish I initially put the treats in so I started taking a knife to them in order to transfer them to a large paper plate.

I jammed the knife in and a hunk of treat zinged out of the dish, nearly taking out an eye. Thinking maybe just the edge was crunchy, I continued to try to cut the treats.

Um, yah. It wasn't just the edges.

The entire batch of rice krispie treats were crunchy. And not in a good way. It was like rock candy kind of crunchy. And painful.

I needed a new plan.

I didn't have a new plan.

There was nothing else in the pantry, to take at a moments notice. I didn't even have an unopened bag of chips.

Chips!

The market is just across the way, I would get chips at the market and then whiz off to the party!

So that we didn't have to come back into the house, Hubby's bright idea was to make up our drinks (which he was going to hold on to - there would be no drinking & driving), we'd swing by the market and then get to the party.

Mmmmm, amaretto and 7-up in my big insulated mug. Sprite is preferable, but we had 7-up so I was going with the flow. Hubby grabbed an insulated bag and filled it with six "Shocktop" beers and we were ready.

I put my big mug on the center console of my car and the sack-o-beer on the passenger floor. Telling Hubby none of this, I went back in the house.

Hubby got in the car, on the passenger side, and knocked the mug filled with amaretto and 7-up deliciousness into the drivers seat. The lid popped off and the seat was now filled with amaretto and 7-up deliciousness.

A smarter person would have started sucking the liquid up with his or her lips, but I ran inside for the shop vac. By the time I got it and an extension cord and made my way back out to the car, my sponge of a seat had completely absorbed all the amaretto and 7-up deliciousness. Like the left over bones after a body has been dissolved in an acid bath, the ice cubes remained.

It was a sad day in Mudville, folks.

Silver Lining:

1. Hubby went to the market and came back with a six pack of Mic Ultra and chips.


2. We had a good time at the party, but were home by 8:00 because we were whooped from all the earlier running around.


3. We were home by 8:00 like old, married people. But I'm happy to be an old, married person as long as I'm old and married to Hubby. Cheers, to gray hairs and rocking chairs (neither of which I have yet)!

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.

Good Grief!

What a morning!

What’s the first thing you do when you get to work?

Beside quickly flipping on the lights, radio & signing in to my computer, I need COFFEE!!!

So, I pick up my cup (the kind with a lid) and head over to the mini kitchen to make my poor man’s Starbuck’s cup of coffee. But first I need to clean out my cup. This is a morning ritual because I just don’t get to it the day before.

I pull off the lid and scrub everything up real well. Then, I grab some paper towels to dry it all off. Even the inside, which I know doesn’t make sense because I’m just going to pour coffee in it.

I proceed to add six sugar substitutes (Splenda is preferred, but work is too cheap), an entire packet of sugar free hot cocoa, powdered creamer (not measured by any means, just pour for a second or two), and finally the coffee goes in. If I’m lucky, my friend Demi will have saved a bit of her cereal milk to top it off. I don’t know what this combo would be called or what it would cost at Starbuck’s, but I get it free at work. HA, HA all you Starbuck’s suckers!

I went to put the lid on the cup and it set in the top way to easily. The little rubber ring was missing!!! You know, that ring that prevents the beverage from dribbling down your shirt.

Crap, what happened to it?

I looked at the floor – nothing but a bunch of paper towel scraps. How hard is it to pick those up people? Never mind the fact that I didn’t pick them up either – I was too busy stressing over the missing rubber ring.

I looked in the sink – not there. Sweat was starting to form on my brow.

Was it in the disposal [Cue the Psycho stabbing scene music]?

I used a plastic knife to push back the black thingy that prevents the food from flying out when you start it up.

Ewwww! There were pieces of chicken in there!

If I was sticking my hand in there, I had to know exactly where the rubber ring was. I needed a flashlight. Fortunately, being the stuff queen, there was one in my purse.

Rush to the desk.

Rush to the mini kitchen.

Rushing was good for the moment because the wind dried up that sweaty brow.

Me and my handy-dandy knife inspected the disposal using the flashlight. Geez, those things are wide. I couldn’t see all the way to the edges. I needed a wider view.

I started to pull the black thingy up, but the underside was covered in slime! ABORT! ABORT!

After washing my hands I looked despairingly around the kitchen. It’s got to be some place else and thought to myself, “Please oh please Magic Rubber Ring Fairy, make it appear. Make it rise up like the Great Pumpkin. To be sure I’ll see it, have the Hallelujah Choir sing loud and proud so I can turn in the right direction.”

Guess what? There is no Magic Rubber Ring Fairy. Dammit!

Dejected, I made my way back to my desk. I figured I’d drink the coffee without a lid and pray to God I didn’t tip the cup over. With the state of my desk, finding a secure place to set it down was a challenge. Not only did it have to be a place where it was unlikely to be tipped over, but it also had to be convenient. I can’t be turning around (I have a U-shaped cube) and reaching way over to the back of my desk for my coffee.

The optimist in me started laughing at the whole situation and I decided to write this blog entry. I had gotten three lines in (right up to the picking up the cup part), and [Bing!] a light bulb went off.

It had to be in the trash. I hadn’t been sitting here very long and I had mostly been the only person in the mini kitchen during this saga so it should be near the top right?

Nope.

In the five minutes I had left the kitchen, someone had come in and made a new pot of coffee. I had to dig past the coffee filter & grounds plus all the paper towels I had used in my garbage disposal quest.

Woot! Woot! There it was!!!

I washed that baby, got it on my lid and guzzled the coffee. Now, I need another cup. I just may skip back to the mini kitchen.


Silver Lining:

1. Duh, I found the ring!

2. There were powdered donettes – five seemed like a good consolation prize for my efforts.

3. I managed to accomplish all this activity without an ounce of caffeine in my body. That’s a major feat. My boss doesn’t even ask me to do things without making sure I’ve had a cup of coffee first – he knows better. That’s what makes him so great. I might just get him a card for Boss’s Day this year.

Burn, Burn, Burn

Just when you think you know it all, you learn something new. Did you know there are instructions on the side of the Arm & Hammer baking soda box for making a fizzy “drink” to relieve heartburn? Well, there is. I’ve pretty much only used baking soda to bake, clear a stopped up drain and make corks pop off test tubes.

These are the things you learn from a friend who has more life experience than you. And more guts!

At a recent lunch, my friend was relaying her weekend experience with heartburn. Her problem was getting the gas out. The last (and only) time I had it, I kept belching up the gas – that was disgusting! I think I’d rather deal with her problem.

She had made a chuck roast for dinner and her & her husband ate somewhat late. A few hours later, the heartburn started, and she couldn’t get a belch to come up (guys don’t have this problem; they are taught the “art” of belching on command in elementary school). When she couldn’t stand it any more, it was time to look some for relief.

To the medicine cabinet! There were no Tums, no Alka Seltzer, no Rolaids, no Pepto.

To the kitchen! Ah, ha! Here, we had some options.

The first option was a bottle of white soda still sitting around from Christmas. However, it may or may not be fizzy.

The second option was the huge box of Arm & Hammer baking soda near the stove. According to my friend, she keeps it close to the stove so it is handy for cooking and in case of a fire. The box was almost empty (she must have a lot of fires), but she checked the side of the box to see how much baking soda to use in water to make a carbonated drink. In reviewing the side of the box, she noted there were precautions regarding the interaction between the baking soda and certain types of medications. It didn’t list any medications, and it was too late to call her doctor to find out.

She looked at the bottle of white soda again.

Then, she went to the refrigerator to see if there was anything all the way in the back. I’m sure there was lots of stuff in the back. There’s plenty of green stuff in mine that would make you feel worse than the heartburn. But, hey, you wouldn’t be worried about the heartburn any more. There still wasn’t anything that would work in the fridge.

How about the pantry? Nope, nothing there.

Back to the baking soda. She must really hate white soda for the baking soda option to look more appealing. She looked at the box again and thought the likelihood of there being an interaction between the baking soda and the medications she was taking were pretty slim. However, now she made a new observation. The expiration date on the box was well past – like, two years past. Making a baking soda & water drink was no longer an option – never mind that she’s been using that same baking soda in recipes and feeding it to her family.

The only thing left was the white soda. She shook the bottle (yah, wise idea when you might need to open it in a second) and fizz appeared. Relief at last! She would have been back to bed so much sooner had she done this first. I guess this revelation is just one more of those life experiences she can pass on to us younger folk.


Silver lining:

1. Home remedies are almost always cheaper than store bought meds. I wonder if this would work with Crystal Light. I’ve heard it counts as intake of water.

2. Try the simplest solution first – shake the bottle (gently). Fizz = good, no fizz = not so good.

Houston, We Have A Problem

We're experiencing a heat wave in St. Louis - 43 degrees on Wednesday; possible 55 degrees today! Compared to the icy wind of the last week or so, this is balmy. Everyone is breaking out their shorts and t-shirts, running up to the volleyball courts and getting out the fishing poles only to find there is still a skating rink open over the sand and ice mostly covers the lakes.

Honestly, this weather couldn't be more inconvenient for me - our deep freeze may be dying. With it warming up, I can't get a bunch of coolers & ice together so I can put it all in the garage.

After the kids are in bed, we (Hubby and I) selfish adults like to have "scoop". This is a custard cup (6 oz.) full of orange sherbet - and I mean full, as in how high can I pile the sherbet on before it falls over and makes a mess? Really, you would think we could admit to ourselves that if we wanted that much sherbet, perhaps a larger bowl would be in order. Nope, not us. As long as it's only a custard cup, we're being prudent in our calorie intake.

We usually keep this "healthy" ice cream alternative in the upstairs freezer so it is easier to scoop out; thus, easier to create skyscrapers of sherbet. However, to our dismay, on Tuesday night, a new container had to be retrieved from the deep freeze. That was a bummer because when the sherbet is rock hard, we give up on trying to scoop out a lot and only have an actual cup.

When Hubby began to dish up the sherbet with ease, my first thought was, "Why is that so easy?" A not so good feeling started to form in my stomach. I pointed this anomaly out to Hubby, we looked at each other, then immediately headed for the basement.

I opened the freezer and there was still a three inch layer crust of ice around the top edge and cold air was coming out. It was weird though because some stuff was really frozen and others were starting to melt. Granted, the melty stuff was mostly items that defrosts quickly - sherbet, frozen orange concentrate, frozen lime concentrate, frozen lemon concentrate, frozen daiquiri concentrate. We concentrate a lot.

I got an empty storage tub and started loading it up. I grabbed all the concentrate first because we use that to make our lime-berry smash & famous margaritas - can't be losin' ingredients for that! Then, I went for the Butterbraids - you can't get those just anywhere, ya know. And finally I picked up the chicken, pork steak, hamburger, fish sticks (kids - you gotta feed them), etc.

We found all kinds of stuff at the bottom of the freezer. There was at least one package of bulk chicken that had busted open and was all freezer burned. There were packages of meats and side items that said they were best if eaten by July of 1981. We found a box of long forgotten Girl Scout cookies - I didn't care what the "best if" date was, we were keeping those. Four boxes of Texas Toast garlic bread were hidden in there - four boxes!!! We even found Elvis! Kidding on that last one, but suffice it to say a freezer cleaning was a little over due.

Spacial girl (that's me - I specialize in filing nooks & crannies - could I put that on a resume, "Spacial Specialist"?) got the majority of the savable food in the upstairs freezer, sent two bags of unsavable/undesirable food to the trash can, and put the remaining savable food in Ken & Roxie's freezer. Thank goodness really good friends live right around the corner - who else can you call at 10pm with this kind of crisis? Although we took all of Roxie's ice, it was for a good cause - meatballs and pierogies are irreplaceable.

Had I still lived in Wisconsin, we could have just put everything into a snow bank outside the back door. As long as the Bumpes' dogs don't get your Christmas turkey, you're good. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone has a deep freeze up there. Why pay for something to take up space in your basement/garage, when nature provides a free one nine months out of the year?

Anyway, when Hubby asked me what we were having for dinner Wednesday night, I immediately said, "Spaghetti - we have four boxes of Texas Toast to eat."

Dinner was served with three pieces of toast per person. Just kidding, I don't want to waste yummy garlic bread! And, dang it, no meatballs - I forgot there were in Roxie's freezer.

Now, how else can we use up the Texas Toast (only 26 more slices to go)? Make dinners consisting of chili, lasagna, mastacolli, or any other Italian dish. Cut it up into little pieces & call it an "appetizer" for Bunco group? Oo, oo, we can string a piece in each window and the exterior doors to ward off vampires. I suppose the possibilities are endless.

Silver lining:

1. The appliance stores didn't have any financing deals we liked or applied to our purchase so we decided we would eat up the food we had and wait for a better deal. Another thought was to save and pay cash for a new freezer. Save? Cash? Foreign concepts for sure.

2. After not buying a freezer we realized we could try to save the freezer we have by fully defrosting it (it is more than five years old and it's never been defrosted) and then checking the freon levels. What a "duh!" moment. As in "Duh, try to fix something before you throw it away." If it works, God was definitely watching out for us on this one. If it doesn't work, God still gave us the good sense to realize a deep freeze is nice, but not a necessity.

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.