Thursday, August 26, 2010

To Make a Cake

Turn on the oven, get out bowl, spoons and ingredients, grease pan and crack nuts. Remove 18 blocks and seven toy cars from the kitchen table. Measure 2 cups flour, salt and baking powder in sifter. Remove boy's hands from flour, measure 1 more cup of flour and add to bowl. Get dustpan and brush up pieces of bowl which boy knocks on floor. Get another bowl. Answer doorbell! Return to kitchen. Remove boy's hands from bowl. Wash boy. Get out eggs. Answer questions. Return to kitchen, find boy and wash all ingredients off of him. Take up greased pan and removed nut shells from it. Head for boy, who flees, knocking bowl from table. Wash kitchen floor, table and walls. Call baker and lie down.

***

Today my wonderful Mother has been painting, and I "graciously" volunteered my services to make supper. My cooking session was a little less eventful than the one I just copied from my new cookbook (Yes, they're making interesting cookbooks now!) but it was still to eventful for my taste.

First of all, we had no butter or milk in the house. (This week would normally be shopping week). Thus, the pie filling I made had no butter or milk in it. Does watery chocolate pie sound appetizing to any of you?

The left-over casserole (the one that I had made the night before - because Mom was putting the first coat of paint on) lacked a can of cream of chicken soup and could have used a bit of salt....and the potatoes were not shredded like they were supposed to be (Because - genius as I am - I don't know how to shred a potato as yet.) I think that poor casserole was missing something else too, but I don't remember what.

Next we had the broccoli. After I dug through both freezers twice, I found a small bag of broccoli that I highly doubted would be enough for all five of us. (Five, because Dad had been invited to a Packer game by his Uncle.) Nonetheless, I took the broccoli upstairs, looked for the steamer, could only find one piece of it, filled the bottom of the steamer with water, plopped the frozen broccoli into it, and clamped on the lid.

The cheese sauce was a real trial. Of course, we had no butter or milk. You are supposed to, first: melt butter in a pan, add three TBLs of flour and wait for it to get bubbly. Then, you'd add milk and wait for it to thicken. After it thickened, you'd add a cup or so of cheese and...Voila. -HAH! No such luck. I took three tablespoons of flour, dumped them in a pan, took a fourth cup of water, dumped that in with it, mixed it up - Viola! - A lumpy mess. It wouldn't bubble. So I added more flour, and about a cup of water. That worked a little better, but I gave up on trying to make it bubble. I then dumped three cups of cheese on top of that mess, plopped a cup of water on top of that, and stirred. I should have just used cheese and water, because the water/flour mixture just turned into lumps. I tried hopelessly to pick them out - one by one - but it just didn't work. I hoped for the best, and poured it over the broccoli.

Finally, we didn't have any more tea bags for tea, so we would have to wash down whatever you would call the concoction I had just fixed up, with water.

Did I mention that during all this, Rebecca, my four -year-old sister, had a bag of gooseberries and was making "Berry juice" for supper? (Meaning that she was smashing the bag of gooseberries with a rolling pin.) As you might have guessed, this process was rather messy, and left a big stain on the kitchen counter. (That washed off, thankfully.)

I put the pie in the fridge, the casserole and broccoli-cheese-thing on the table, and called everyone to come and eat - before "It explodes or something," as I put it.

They all ate it, the only comments I got were on the watery, chocolate pie. They all said it would definitely have been better with milk and butter. :D The joys of learning to be a keeper-at-home. I wonder if they suspected anything about the rest of the meal, or if they were just too polite to mention any grotesqueness.

Well. I just thought I'd entertain ya'll with one of my not-so-unfortunate-misfortunes. Or "Lessons for life."

Have a good day.

Ps. Mom just checked this and said she had no idea about the rest of the meal. :?

11 comments:

Bailey said...

If you would have added a bit of jumping up and down and a dash of melodramatic howling, I would have definitely thunk you'd plagiarized my life. Ever hear of my sauce making experience?

Good. It wasn't pretty.

POSTSCRIPT. I always find cookbooks interesting. The grammar is always particularly atrocious.

Anna said...

lol :) I know what you mean. - And I think I did hear your sauce making experience. :P

Anna said...

*about* your sauce making experience.

Bethany d said...

Ack - sauce. -- thankfully I haven't exploded that yet. Watery Chocolate Pie...why didn't you freeze it? No one would be able to tell. :D Actually, that might not work. **considering my snack mix experience** which I do not wish to think about. :)

~Bethany

P.s. We have a cookbook with a page similiar to that story.

Kara said...

:D The pie was alright, just a bit different!

Maria said...

At least you don't always burn yourself like I do Anna! I am sure it all tasted fine. I love your new profile pic by the way. It looks beautiful!

HannahBergmann said...

Anna-

That was so funny to read--at the time you probably weren't laughing, though. At least you didn't drop your only egg on the floor, and open the brown sugar bag to have a taste, and dumped the bag upside down! That was hilarious. I ran to the drawer to get a washcloth, only to find there weren't any. So, I ran upstairs to get a washcloth, which I didn't find, so I grabbed a bath washcloth, and ran downstairs. All my "pains" I took didn't go to any use. Badger ate the brown sugar up. I was glad no one knew about it, though. :) (I did that the day when my grandmamma and Bailey were trying to make oatmeal raison cookies for Chase. Mom & Dad weren't there, either--in California. After that, I went to see how much milk we had left, and slipped in Badger's water and got a huge goose-egg on my head. ((That hurt really bad.)) That was all my troubles that day, oh, besides spilling cheerios on the floor, and twisting my finger, and having a paper cut on my lip!)

HUGS,
Hannah

Louisa said...

I am sure it did not taste that badly.
I have had many kitchen mess-ups
Between burning my self and expolding cupcakes(very long story)
I totally understand.
I am sure it tasted just fine

Katie said...

Ahh, Anna, I see it's not just a blonde thing. Wait, didn't you say something about having blonde streaks in your hair? Anyway. I'm going to copy what Bailey said, except for using that pla-whatever word.

Anna said...

lol:) It seems that all of us are becoming wonderful cooks! :P Hopefully we'll be done messing/burning up food by the time we're on our own.

Anonymous said...

First and foremost....Lock said boy up in his room before you start cooking. As for the rest, I'm sure it was a good lesson for you to know how to cook something without all the ingredients, someday you may just have to make do..just as you did here. and you surely did a good job of making do...Congratulations!! Mamaw