not as strong as I thought I was
Some coworkers decided to order a pizza for lunch and boy did that sound good. I said no, but it was extremely difficult. I love pizza! And as soon as I tell myself that I can't do something, like eat out or buy a lunch, that's exactly what I start craving. My mom mentioned that this was good practice for living overseas and I know in my head that she's right, but sometimes I think it can be easier when you aren't surrounded with all the temptation.
This could be an interesting 18 days. Since today is only day 2 my food is relatively normal; at least not abnormal. Yogurt, a tomato and cucumber salad, some cherries, crackers, a bagel from work, etc. But knowing the state of my kitchen and my love/hate relationship with food and cooking it could get interesting.
I love cookbooks. In fact, I have at least nine cookbooks, most of which I have read cover to cover at least once . . . and yet I rarely cook. Sometimes I go to a bookstore, grab a cookbook off the shelf and sit down and read it. One of my favorite cookbooks is one my grandma gave me for Christmas last year. It's the Tomato Cookbook and it is actually shaped like a tomato. : )
I love thinking about cooking and how it puts together art and science in a great way, but when it comes right down to it, I can't say that I love to cook. There's too much work involved . . .
It frustrates me to spend an hour cooking something.
And then to spend practically as much time cleaning up the mess.
And then . . . you have to eat it all.
It probably wouldn't be so bad if I didn't feel like I needed to make large quantities of things to counterbalance the amount of time cooking takes in the first place. But since I can't escape that thinking, I usually end up with enough food that I am eating the same thing for days and days. It makes me value the days when all of us kids lived at home and both my brothers ate a lot . . . it's nice not to have to eat it all yourself.
I would like to think that I'm not bad at cooking, although I do tend toward having cooking disasters rather than cooking mistakes. When something does go wrong it goes really wrong.
The Brownie Fiasco
A couple years ago I decided to make brownies from a mix to take to small group. Not hard you say. Yeah, that's what I thought.
It's simple, you add water, butter, eggs and maybe one other thing. Well, I don't normally eat eggs, which means that I don't buy eggs, especially since I rarely bake or cook and even when I do I choose recipes that don't include them. So, I googled egg substitutes and found a handy-dandy site that listed a whole bunch of options. I choose the easiest one which was to substitute a mashed banana for the egg. It made sense because people make banana bread and these were brownies so it would kind of be like banana chocolate bread. So I mixed it all up, put it in the oven, turned on the timer and left it to bake.
Twenty minutes later, I open the oven door to find the pan is full of a brown, boiling liquid. Despite the fact that I don't often make brownies, I knew that was not normal. I decided it just needed a bit more time and reset the timer. When I came back nothing had changed. My time was running short so I pulled the pan out of the oven and set it on top to cool and hopefully solidify, although that just sounds wrong when speaking of brownies. Forty minutes later, when I took a knife and tried to cut them I realized that it was as solid as a rock. It was like a banana chocolate stone. I finally wedged out a small corner and almost broke my tooth trying to taste it. I don't know what happened, but somehow it tasted AWFUL!!!!! I put in all the normal ingredients except the egg and so I have no idea where the horribleness came from; but wow, was it bad!
I stopped by the bakery to pick up brownies on my way to small group and haven't tried to make them since . . .
This could be an interesting 18 days. Since today is only day 2 my food is relatively normal; at least not abnormal. Yogurt, a tomato and cucumber salad, some cherries, crackers, a bagel from work, etc. But knowing the state of my kitchen and my love/hate relationship with food and cooking it could get interesting.
I love cookbooks. In fact, I have at least nine cookbooks, most of which I have read cover to cover at least once . . . and yet I rarely cook. Sometimes I go to a bookstore, grab a cookbook off the shelf and sit down and read it. One of my favorite cookbooks is one my grandma gave me for Christmas last year. It's the Tomato Cookbook and it is actually shaped like a tomato. : )
I love thinking about cooking and how it puts together art and science in a great way, but when it comes right down to it, I can't say that I love to cook. There's too much work involved . . .
It frustrates me to spend an hour cooking something.
And then to spend practically as much time cleaning up the mess.
And then . . . you have to eat it all.
It probably wouldn't be so bad if I didn't feel like I needed to make large quantities of things to counterbalance the amount of time cooking takes in the first place. But since I can't escape that thinking, I usually end up with enough food that I am eating the same thing for days and days. It makes me value the days when all of us kids lived at home and both my brothers ate a lot . . . it's nice not to have to eat it all yourself.
I would like to think that I'm not bad at cooking, although I do tend toward having cooking disasters rather than cooking mistakes. When something does go wrong it goes really wrong.
The Brownie Fiasco
A couple years ago I decided to make brownies from a mix to take to small group. Not hard you say. Yeah, that's what I thought.
It's simple, you add water, butter, eggs and maybe one other thing. Well, I don't normally eat eggs, which means that I don't buy eggs, especially since I rarely bake or cook and even when I do I choose recipes that don't include them. So, I googled egg substitutes and found a handy-dandy site that listed a whole bunch of options. I choose the easiest one which was to substitute a mashed banana for the egg. It made sense because people make banana bread and these were brownies so it would kind of be like banana chocolate bread. So I mixed it all up, put it in the oven, turned on the timer and left it to bake.
Twenty minutes later, I open the oven door to find the pan is full of a brown, boiling liquid. Despite the fact that I don't often make brownies, I knew that was not normal. I decided it just needed a bit more time and reset the timer. When I came back nothing had changed. My time was running short so I pulled the pan out of the oven and set it on top to cool and hopefully solidify, although that just sounds wrong when speaking of brownies. Forty minutes later, when I took a knife and tried to cut them I realized that it was as solid as a rock. It was like a banana chocolate stone. I finally wedged out a small corner and almost broke my tooth trying to taste it. I don't know what happened, but somehow it tasted AWFUL!!!!! I put in all the normal ingredients except the egg and so I have no idea where the horribleness came from; but wow, was it bad!
I stopped by the bakery to pick up brownies on my way to small group and haven't tried to make them since . . .
hmm, well, I tried to post a comment and I waited a bit and it isn't showing up... so if you get two of these, sorry :-)
ReplyDeleteI loved your post from yesterday - I like that song too, and I am also revolted by spaghetti-o's :-) It makes me think of a song, which I think is by LeeAnn Rimes, called 'I Hope You Dance'.
The brownie fiasco story made me laugh, especially because I had my own brownie adventure with an attempt last year at 'microwave brownies', since I don't have an oven. They were pretty solid... not quite inedible, but pretty bad :-p :-)
~Ruth