The avocados I bought went from “not ripe enough” to “WAAAAAAY overripe and bordering on mush” in what seemed to be the blink of an eye.
I really need to figure out how to time ripening produce better.
Archive for the ‘Disasters’ Category
Guacamole will have to wait for another day
Sunday, August 15th, 2010Happy New Year!
Monday, January 4th, 2010OK, a few days late, but better than never! Spent Christmas week visiting a relative in Phoenix, got back on the 30th and have been trying to get back to something resembling “normal”. Unfortunately, the year started off with a big old cooking FAIL. Yesterday we had our Christmas here at home, and I wanted to make sausage cheese balls. Just been on my mind for a while and Christmas seemed a good as excuse as any!
Now, I haven’t made these in about 10 years. I pulled the recipe from the Betty Crocker/Bisquick website. I thought the proportions seemed quite a bit off – 3 cups of bisquick, 4 cups of cheese? To just one pound of sausage? But then I thought, hey, it’s Bisquick’s own recipe! They of all people should have it right.
I should have trusted my instincts and found another recipe. They were awful. Ended up as sort of a cheesy dough with bits of sausage and just terrible.
Next time I’ll be using this recipe from Consumer Web Help – the proportions seem much more reasonable and the sausage isn’t so far outnumbered by the cheese & Bisquick.
Ah well, lesson learned. Onward and upward!
Well, at least we’re in delivery range of 3 pizza places.
Sunday, April 27th, 2008Inedible. 2.5 hours at 250 degrees. Internal temps between 160-170. (I was shooting for 160, but still…)
Tough and tasteless. The veggies were rock hard. (2.5 hours! Small pieces!!)
The worst part is that I have no idea what went wrong. Wrong amount of liquid? Wrong cut of meat? Bad temp?
The vegetables not cooking through is what really mystifies me.
Bless his heart, my brother said, “You win some, you lose some.” And kindly decided it must be the cut of meat.
I’m going to throw it all in a pot tomorrow with some stock and BBQ sauce and see what we get. As my brother said, “It’s not like it could get worse.”
ETA: Talked w/ones more knowledgeable – apparently I didn’t cook it long enough! Next time, next time… Really though, you’d think Pot Roast would be a no-brainer.
Learn from my mistake!
Monday, March 24th, 2008I fixed up my last salmon filet for lunch today, using the maple-soy recipe again, because I just loved it that much. (Salmon for lunch – how decadent!)
When putting the baking dish in the oven, do be careful not to slop said glaze all over the place in the oven. It makes a bit of a smoky mess.
The good news is that it does look like it completely burned, and once the oven is cool again, it hopefully will just be a matter of scraping off a bit of carbon from the bottom of the oven, and not a large sticky mess.
The most important thing is that the salmon emerged unharmed.
‘Sploding Kielbasa
Saturday, March 15th, 2008
So, thanks to this week’s sale, we had Kielbasa this evening. Again, very tasty, but once again, not photogenic at all, as it split and broke up during the process…
My brother, the non-cook asked, “Did you fork poke it?”
*headdesk*
Nope, didn’t even occur to me. Maybe next time I’ll remember and I’ll actually have a dinner that is worth of photography. :)
Staying away from the packets…
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Well, if I didn’t have a reason to swear off packet soup bases before, I certainly do now.
Wednesday evening I made vegetable beef soup, tasted lovely, and then I was quite ill on Thursday. I didn’t make a connection… Had the leftovers on Friday and late Friday night, ill again – made the connection at about 3 AM.
I know the beef was cooked thoroughly, through the browning at the start and the hour of simmering (and smelled lovely the whole time), the cutting board and knife and various utensils and pans were squeaky clean, so I don’t know if it actually qualifies as food poisoning or just something in the packet that quite strongly disagreed with me, or just something wrong with the beef that didn’t manifest itself before or during cooking, but the rest of the leftovers have been binned and no way in hell will I be using that packet again.
The good news is that I can eat again and watch cooking shows and Dirty Jobs will no unfortunate consequences. The bad news is that part of me is afraid to cook again for fear of going through this again.
And yes, only an idiot can manage to poison herself twice in the space of 3 days…