My incompetence knows no bounds

This weekend was a rather dull and bumbling waste of time. Last week was a long and *slightly* stressful work week so Friday night I crashed at about 8:30 and slept 12 straight hours. That was surprising and super wonderful. Saturday, I worked a few more hours and wasted my afternoon with another delightful nap. Saturday night I found myself in a bit of a conundrum. A couple weeks ago, I made a vow to myself that I would only eat out once a week, and drink alcohol once a week, to monitor the intake of calories and the outflow of cash. Well, I’ve made good the deal with myself with only one slipup in three weeks. Saturday night, I couldn’t eat out or drink because I already used my allotment for the week. To occupy my sober-time I decided to make chocolate chip cookies and thought it would be a nice treat to mail some home and bring some into work.

Let me state now that I do not claim to be a master cook or baker. My family relentlessly heckles me and my ability and desire to be anywhere near a kitchen. Kitchen work, in any form, is not something I have ever grown fond of. In all reality, how fun is it to cook for one person? If a piece of toast is going to satisfy the grumbling in my belly as well as a steak; I am going with the toast. But I will say that my cooking has gotten better (the frequency anyway) because of my new resolution. I can only handle toast (yes, TOAST, and it is whole wheat if that makes you feel any better) about 4 days a week, so that leaves 2 more days in which I have to find something else to consume. Last week, I made BBQ chicken and a baked potato, spaghetti (whole wheat), and a casserole. Not difficult things to make, but all those meals required me to turn on the oven/stove. PROGRESS!

Back to this weekend… I thought I was doing great, whipping up those chocolate chip cookies on Saturday night, all the while smirking and humming to myself; anticipating the looks of shock on my parent’s faces as they opened a package of homemade cookies from THEIR DAUGHTER. However, I encountered a small problem. The dough was extremely dry. When I attempted to bake the cookies, they didn’t melt into gooey soft wonderful-ness. They stayed in their dry, lumpy form and turned brown. I blamed my measuring cups; I blamed the recipe (don’t the cookbook editors check their recipes before printing?!); I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. All my planning and hard work turned into floury ugly lumps. I covered the bowl of cookie dough and put it in the refrigerator, not yet willing to give up on my little project, hoping a night of sleep would reveal the error in my recipe.

The next afternoon, I opened the microwave to warm up some leftover spaghetti to find a bowl of half melted, congealed butter. Butter that was patiently waiting to be stirred into cookie dough.

Can you imagine the swearing that occurred? The hair on Charlie’s ears were singed.

To my family, who know my mothers fabulous cooking: The cooking gene didn't carry through. From now on, I will bring pickles to all family events.