A Brief History Of Why I Was Up at 7 AM Buying Matches.
I am having some friends over for cocktails and snacks tomorrow night. Being me, which, you all know means being one of those people who is super awesome at getting everything done in advance when it comes to cooking (one of my few good qualities!), I went grocery shopping last night and bought all the food that I wanted to prepare- and started preparing all the stuff that I thought would be good to get done ahead of time.
I was super excited when I found fresh cranberries at the grocery store, a little earlier than usual! So I bought a couple bags to make sorbet. I started out by boiling the cranberries down with sugar and vanilla (beans! from karnythia!) and then let them sit to cool.
Next I made some yummy chicken liver spread and some olive tapenade. I candied some cashews. I roasted some baby asparagus (I’m not sure whether I’m going to chop it up or leave it as is, but it is sure yummy)
The sorbet mix was seeming cool enough at this point to put it in the blender, so I poured it in and put that baby on FRAPPE!
A few seconds later, I had beautifully-blended, sweet, gooey, ruby-colored sorbet mix.
The next step in my cranberry sorbet recipe (which I’ve made for Thanksgiving before and was pretty much winging because it’s a super easy recipe) is to strain it through a wire mesh.
I set up my mesh over a bowl. I got it all ready to pour.
I took the blender top off the blender bottom, moved to pour-
And the blender ring came loose. Instead of that beautiful, ruby-colored goo being nicely inside the wire mesh strainer and one step closer to becoming a delicious sorbet, it was:
1) on the counter
2) on the floor
3) in the toaster
4) down my front
I am so glad I was wearing pajamas and not real clothes.
As it was, my pajamas looked sort of like this:
And so did my floor, my counter, my rug…pretty much anything within a 2-foot radius.
I cleaned everything up as best as I could, apart from the pajamas, which I am giving up as a lost cause. I soaked three rugs (the one it spilled on initially, and two more that got dripped on in the cleanup effort), and washed out the inside of my toaster, which is now resting on a towel until it is thoroughly dried out before I use it again, because it actually got down into the innards of the toaster and I figured water was better than cranberries.
I had a momentary lapse of something when I first put the toaster into the sink, and was thinking, shit, I could get electrocuted, isn’t this every bad movie death ever? But then I remembered that only happens when the toaster is plugged in. And since the toaster plug was also covered in Talbot’s guts, it was definitely not plugged in.
Whew.
So it took me a little over an hour of discovering things like the fact that Talbot had managed to drip into the drawers and down the insides of my cabinets before I finished cleaning up the mess and got back to work on the actual cooking.
I started by very happily putting some onions in a pan to caramelize, and started them cooking. I was going to make a cooked apple and onion thingy. So, when I got the onions to the point at which I wanted them, I turned down the burner and chopped the apples.
But I didn’t just turn down the burner. I turned off the burner.
And then started my second problem.
Because somehow, in the time between cooking the onions and chopping the apples, both of the pilot lights on my stove decided to extinguish their tiny blue flames.
And I didn’t have any matches. No matches, no lighter. Not even anything I could safely set on fire by holding it close to a lightbulb.
Well, shit.
So I packaged up the apples, turned off the gas at the main line to the stove to avoid leaks, and made a cold bean topping instead, which didn’t need any heat. Then I spent the rest of the night waking up fitfully, angsting about getting the actual oven pilot relit, since turning off the gas completely made that one go off, too, and I didn’t know where it was or how it was supposed to be relit.
Finally, at about 6:45, I decided I had had enough of this, got up and showered, and went to the grocery store to get some matches. I found the pilot, lit that baby up, and finished cooking my apples.
The apples were hot, mushy, and perfect by 8:15, and I was blessedly able to leave for work at the usual time!
There are still some spots of red goo lingering, which will need to get cleaned up before the guests, but my floor got an impressive scrubbing it would not have gotten otherwise! Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll have time to re-make the sorbet in time for guesties :-( boo. But we’ll see. I am intending to get more cranberries and cheat a little by putting it in the freezer to chill between steps so I can get it done tonight.
Whew.
Mirrored from Antagonia.net.