The curse has been lifted

The curse of the kitchen disasters, you know. It left as suddenly as it came, leaving behind a veritable feast of yummiliciousness (oooh, Crystal made up a word!).

I'm not sure why it decided to visit my home, nor do I know why it chose to go, but let me tell you I am sure glad that it did. Perhaps it left with my cold, or perhaps my little emo dog chased it away with her sad, sad eyes. Or maybe... just maybe... it was banished into the night with the arrival of the newest member of our household.




Meet my new favorite family member, Miss KitchenAid Mixer.




Aint she a beaut? Her baby sister, Li'l Immersion Blender is sitting next to her. I've been wanting to welcome Miss Mixer into my home for quite some time now and after months and months of agonizing over the decision I went for it. I bought the souped up model with the all metal gears and the huge bowl and the powerful motor. This baby has some power, people. I was originally not going to spring for that one, but I found it for a crazy low price and with a rebate to boot and I carefully measured the tiny spot on my counter to make sure it would fit... and, well, obviously it does. Barely. *grin*

When I ordered her, I had visions of bread loaves and cookies and brownies dancing in my head. I'm hopefully going to be a mom someday, and moms bake, you know. They do not, however, kill off half of their state by making nu-cu-ler pastries. But I have these grand dreams of me and Miss Mixer creating all sorts of yummilicious items full of genetically-modified-wheat and white sugar and pounds and pounds of luscious butter. Someone's gotta fatten me up (seriously... lost toooo much weight this winter!). Do you think she's up to the task?

I'm thinking of buying her a few friends to play with. Mr. Grain Mill and Mrs. Pasta Maker. Maaaaaybe if my husband is nice enough to me, I'll consider having his buddy, Mr. Ice Cream Maker Dude, over for a few meals. But for now, it's just me and Miss Mixer. But oh, what a wonderful pair we are.

We have already made pizza (with a chickpea crust):



And peanut butter cookies.... MMmmmmm!




That was Saturday. Sunday she really got a workout by mixing up some yummy doughy, yeasty goodness.



Oh yes. Bread. FRESH bread. Like, two loaves of BREAD. Made with yeast and white flour and white sugar. Kneaded and risen to perfection. *happy sigh* Can you even believe it?!



And it.is.gooood.y'all.



See? The first loaf is already half gone.

I can definitely say that Miss Mixer was broken into quite nicely this weekend. And my mind is going nuts trying to decide what to bake next! You know you like your new mixer when you look at the huge batch of cookies on the table and find yourself wanting to binge on them just so that you will have a good excuse to make brownies.

Who has issues? Not me. I just have a yummiliciousness-inducing new toy. Oh, and the absence of the kitchen curse, of course.

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.

Ever had one of those days

where you're SO proud of yourself for taking the time to bake a few dozen cookies... that is until you realize you forgot to add the baking soda?

But hey, it's not all bad. I just watched two episodes of How Clean is Your House? on BBC (just discovered that channel and show recently!) and my slightly messy/cluttered house suddenly feels immaculate.

For those of you that are wondering, I made these cookies.

Only I don't cook with shortening, so I used extra virgin coconut oil instead, added a little extra flour, substituted some cinnamon instead of vanilla, and added 1/2 cup chopped pecans and a dash of salt. They're pretty good, but I highly recommend you don't forget the baking soda.