My house is nu-cu-ler

I titled this post just to annoy my husband, who cringes every time he hears someone say "nu-cu-ler" instead of nuclear. It absolutely drives him batty. *grin*

Last night, this dear nu-cu-ler man of mine came home with a ton of chocolate. I asked him to stop in Walgreen's on the way home to pick up some coke (which they were OUT OF... THE NERVE!!! I'm down to one can of coke. This is dangerous territory, people.) and a little chocolate, and he came home with an entire shopping bag full of chocolate. I'm telling you, this man gets me. He brought some dark chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds, some 1/2 off easter candy, and *happy sigh* a bar of Lindt Intense Orange. He said, "See? I read your blog." Well, I read his blog too, so does that mean I should bring home a pink jeep for him?

"That's nice, Crystal, but why is your house nu-cu-ler?" you ask.

Well, see, this week has been very interesting and crazy and between all that stuff and all the tax stuff, my brain has been a weeeee bit scattered. Last night I had a craving for some freshly baked bread with butter and creamy, raw honey (GET SOME, I'm telling you. It's like semi-solid-semi-liquid gold.) only I didn't want to knead and wait hours for bread to rise, so I headed over to one of my favorite food blogs (which is a new addiction of mine. Really. I hog them in my Bloglines and stay up until wee hours of the night reading them, fantasizing about cooking - which I hate - all the food that I will never eat. I don't have issues. I really don't.) and printed out a recipe for whole wheat Irish soda bread. Soda bread is made with baking soda (here is where you say "duuuuuh, Crystal") instead of yeast.

The recipe seemed easy enough, so I went to work. The recipe stated that it would make 2-3 servings, so I originally planned on doubling it. However I forgot, so that didn't happen (which is good, because it really turned out to be 5-6 servings at the least). I measured out my dry ingredients and mixed them all up. I got out my new immersion blender and whipped up some milk (powdered rice milk is a life saver when you haven't been to the grocery store in a week and a half) and was about to pour it in. It was at that moment that I re-examined the recipe and realized that I pulled out the baking powder instead of baking soda. I almost decided to throw in the baking soda anyway, but was afraid that would make things worse so I just left it alone.

I poured in the milk and started to mix. The dough was really wet. I mean, re-al-ly wet. Hmm. Ok. I know it's humid here and that can mess with dough, but it ain't THAT humid. This is when, dear bloggy friends, I saw that I had been using an 1/8 cup measuring cup when I thought it was 1/4 cup. Who does that? Me. These are odd shaped measuring cups and appear to hold much more than they really do, so I easily get confused when I don't actually read the labels on them, and who needs to read labels when cooking? Totally unnecessary. I don't have time for that. I have a business to run!

I dumped in the other half of the flour that should have been there already and mixed some more. I formed the loaf and gently placed it on the cooking sheet and stuck it in the oven with the timer set to 35 mins, as instructed by the recipe. 35 minutes later, bread is not browned yet, so I stuck it back in and set the timer for 10 minutes more.

10 minutes later, bread is STILL not browned. I grabbed my pot holder and pulled out my oven thermometer. "325 degrees! What in the world? It should be 425, not 325. My oven is broken!! No wonder the bread won't cook!" It was at THIS point that I looked at my oven dial and realized I set it 100 degrees too low.

I kicked up the heat and cooked it for another 15-20 minutes or so and pulled it out. It browned nicely, finally, and cooked through, but it took on a funny shape and this weird shape was not unlike that of a mushroom cloud. Now I'm no scientist, but by my calculations, the entire lower half of Texas should be dead by now. Anyone watch the news today?

It was a little crunchy on the outside, but butter and raw honey heals all. Even nu-cu-ler kitchen disasters.

I was going to bake cookies today, but with my continuing scatter-brain episode, I figured I better not or CTU will be beating down my door to confiscate the evidence and high-tail my butt over to Guantanimo.

Although meeting Jack Bauer would be cool.