There are days I should not be allowed
in the kitchen.
Today was one of them.
For lunch, I decided to try out a new
recipe (first mistake) for a tuna (second mistake)-noodle casserole.
It could be that this recipe, in the hands of any other cook
would be just fine, and not the bland, yet colorful,
left-overs-for-days nightmare that I created. It could be that
I tend to use recipes as “guidelines” rather than “directions”
when I am cooking, adapting them to family likes/dislikes and
ingredients on hand.
It could be that I completely
changed the taste of this casserole by subsituting sauteed, fresh
peppers for a jar of roasted peppers (both of which are vegetables
and both of which are disliked by the boy child). It could be
that I angered the pasta gods by substituting penne pasta for fusilli
pasta (potato, potato).
Or it could be that any recipe
which combines tuna (which the boy child dislikes), and green beans
(see: boy child/vegetables/dislike) was doomed from the start.
The husband, who likes to eat much better
than he likes to cook, declared the casserole was “tasty.” This was a
bold-faced lie and we both knew it. He continues to lie to me this
way because I am currently enjoying a 60% success rate in terms of tasty cooking. I am coming off a string of hits including,
but not limited to potato soup, monster bars, and scotcheroos.
The boy child, on the other hand, has
not figured out the link between bolstering Mom's ego and a continued
supply of monster bars. Within an hour, he was digging through the
freezer searching for un-frostbitten pizza rolls.
Undeterred by my lunchtime loss, I
decided to try a new recipe for banana cake. “Baking,” unlike
“cooking,” is a mystical art that is part chemistry, part
sorcery. I make every attempt to follow the recipe carefully, if not
obsessively, while baking.
I mashed the bananas and set them
aside; I mixed the dry ingredients and set them aside; I creamed the
butter until it was light and fluffy. I added the eggs.
Only when I noticed my light and fluffy
butter becoming bumpy, clumps of butter surrounded by snotty egg
whites, did I realized I had forgotten to cream the sugar and the
butter before adding the eggs. During my brief stint as a half-baked
home ec teacher I drilled that important step into the minds of my
students. But it was too late to turn back. What was the worst that
could happen? I knew the worst that could happen, and it did.
Instead of the “smooth, slightly
thick batter with some lumps” the recipe said I would have, I had a
runny batter with a lot of gloopy, curdy lumps.
I was frustrated, because I had waited
all week to try out this recipe. But my frustration was half-hearted,
because I am the only one in the house who actually likes banana
bars/cakes/bread. And if I'm being honest, the only reason I like
them is because I can use up the ripe bananas, relieving some of my
guilt over letting them go to waste.
The good news is the banana cake turned
out ok. It is banana cake, after all, not brain surgery. And the cake
features a thick layer of cream cheese frosting.
Cream cheese frosting makes everything
better.
Everything except tuna casserole. (But I
wouldn't bet against it.)
