kitchen of errors

(a homemade comedy)

so, in case you didn't know, i am a wife now. and (at least in our somewhat traditional household), wives do important things, like: dust the places you never see, wash the never-disappearing pile of dishes, continually move socks from the living room to the bedroom hamper, remember where lost things are (especially if they're your husbands lost things) and... cook food. like, food that you can eat. and your husband can eat. that you could even call, say... dinner? breakfast? lunch? 

now, don't get me wrong- i'm not a stranger to the kitchen. in fact, i'm pretty handy around a kitchenaid mixer, and i've actually been pretty busy as of late, just doing what i love to do best: dessert. cookies, cakes, yummy and pretty treats. 

don't believe me? well, lookie here:

bugs for my niece's dedication- whole wheat sugar cookies with royal icing

super bowl cookies- whole wheat sugar cookies with royal icing

however, cooking (like, not baking), is a little more challenging for me. but now that i have a husband to support with my culinary-ness, and the fact that he actually eats what i make, i made the decision to really buckle down and start trying to cook. 

and honestly, i don't think i'm that bad- i mean, recipes are pretty easy to follow, and new ones can be challenging or fun to try. while i'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a foodie, nor do i see myself really enjoying cooking just to cook, i am embracing this new aspect of my role and learning to enjoy, and better, myself. i've even taken to meal planning (gasp) and shopping lists (double gasp).*

*i love lists, it's no secret. shopping lists are fun cause you can make one draft, then make a second draft, organizing items into categories/store departments. nerd alert!

here's some evidence of my wifely duties:

weekly recipe planning and shopping list

an actual delicious dinner- greek chicken and grilled veggie pitas!

so by this time, you're probably thinking i'm awesome at being a cooking wife, and you're wondering why i'm writing a post about my awesome culinary skills. just to brag, perhaps?

well, dear reader- not to shock you, but guess what? i'm not perfect! by any stretch, of any imagination. to my dismay, and humor, my follies and spacey-gracey character follows me everywhere... even into the kitchen. for instance...

this past saturday i decided to wake up early and make my loving husband some breakfast. typically he is a great homemade waffle cook on sundays, so i wanted to surprise him with something great to show my gratitude. 

i woke up, went into the kitchen, and pulled out the waffle iron. i pulled out my favorite glass bowls, a measuring cup, a banana, and the waffle/pancake mix. i pulled out the the thick-cut bacon (a real treat, we're usually thin little turkey-bacon eaters) and a huge frying pan. cheerfully, i read the directions on the back of the waffle/pancake mix box, mixing up my little floury batter, and added a teeny touch of pumpkin pie spice and a banana. i put the bacon in the pan, and i heard the waffle iron 'ding' that it was ready. i pour the waffle mix in, thinking 'this doesn't seem like much- just four waffles from the whole recipe?'. i close the waffle iron, with thoughts of golden, fluffy banana waffles to come. yum! 

i pick up the box, and read the directions again to see why my batter seemed like such a little batch. "Makes 6-10 pancakes". how could i have possible stretched that batter to make more than 4? 4 was a stretch to begin with. then i read again... "Makes 6-10 pancakes". oh. yeah. i made waffles. 

turns out the waffle recipe has a few more ingredients and makes a lot more batte, if you do it right. who knew they were so different?

so i remixed another batch of batter, this time following the directions for waffles. the batter looks much better, but i'm out of bananas, so i grab the pumpkin pie spice, for a shake or two of yumminess to spice up the new batch. little did i pay attention to the top, and i opened the wrong end, so one shake actually turned into one huge dump of pumpkin pie spice. at this point, i was debating whether to switch from decaf to regular coffee, because i definitely needed to pay a little closer attention to what i was doing.

by this time the bacon was burning, (because i had totally forgotten about it), so i grabbed the bowl of batter to bring to the sink and dump out the extra spice before i mixed it in,while i turned the bacon over. however, my natural instinct kicked in and before i knew it, i was stirring the batter, and 13 gallons of spice, together, and flipping the burned bacon over. 

at this point there was no helping me: i had pancakes cooking in the waffle iron, super spiced pancake batter ready to go, burned bacon, and i hadn't even made the coffee yet. i was out of pancake mix, so i did what any nice wife trying to feed her husband would do: cooked the extra spicy batter into mini pancakes. 

by now i thought i had a handle on the morning, so i got out the regular coffee beans to grind up for my husbands coffee. we typically grind our beans in our magic bullet, which can do a lot at one time but doesn't always grind them all evenly (the bottom beans are super fine, the top can be super coarse). since this was a new bag of coffee, i had a fair share of grinding to do. 

so- i begin. pour the coffee beans into the magic bullet cup; pulse them to a ground pulp. open the cup, pour the ground beans into the coffee container, then repeat to fill up the container. it can hold about 3-4 magic bullet cups-full, so i filled up the second time and started grinding. then i fill up the third time, and start grinding. of course, i assumed i knew what i was doing, so when i opened the cup and poured them into the container the third time, i didn't even look at them. maybe not my best choice. 

because, when i looked into the container after the third grind, there was about half a cupful of almost whole, unground beans that hadn't made it to the grinding blades in the magic bullet. and these big beans were mixed into a big, dark, oily pile of powdery beans. 

and the bacon was burning again. 

and the pancake-waffles were beeping to be done. 

and the spicy pancakes needed to be flipped. 

.... 

seven minutes later, my husband was up. he came to the table and was greeted by hot coffee, extra-crispy bacon, (super spicy) pancakes AND banana waffles. after i gave him a quick warning on the extra well-done bacon, the spicy pancakes and the pancakes-turned-waffles, he managed to choke down his breakfast. only then did i tell him i had to fish each and every single whole bean out of the ground beans with a fork. he just laughed at me.

moral of the story: i can be the good wife during the week that cooks and plans. but i think he has proven to be the weekend breakfast hero in our house. i can accept that, and maybe i'll just be the wife that sleeps in on the weekends.