Once again, too ambitious. We decided to make banana muffins before dinner this evening. Never make banana muffins before dinner. Always take care of the basics first- such as the cleaning and the dinner. Then, if there's time (which there won't be), work on the banana muffins.
It was all going well; we were starting on the dry ingredients after finishing up the egg, milk & oil mixture. I went in search for the salt which is the baking cabinet above the microwave. It's a horrible concept, putting the baking cabinet above the microwave, with its bags of flour and sugar and tipsy almost empty bottles of sesame oil and vanilla. I wasn't entirely surprised when a jar of apple cider vinegar came hurtling out of the cupboard at me. What did surprise me is when it catapulted itself off of our wet ingredient bowl and onto the floor, upsetting the bowl and everything in it onto my jeans and shirt.
I immediately went into my familiar routine of damage control, sopping up wet paper towels full of eggy oily milky mess off of the floor and oven. I walked back and forth to the sink to wet my paper towels and that's when I saw Liam, who was working on the dry ingredients, dump a spoonful of flour onto the counter. He was covered in flour already and I contemplated just having him use his shirt to clean it up. Instead I gave him another wet paper towel and helped him push the spilled flour onto a napkin.
We continued our cooking; starting over with the wet ingredients of course. I went to look for the whisk to beat in the eggs, milk and oil. Where was the whisk? I looked on the floor, thinking it must have shot across the kitchen in the horrible bowl spilling incident of 5 minutes ago. Curiously, Liam found the whisk... it was in the open utensil drawer. And that is when we realized that not all of the bowl's contents had spilled onto the oven, floor and my pants. Some had also spilled into our utensil drawer, along with the wet whisk. Beautiful.
For someone who regularly messes up the kitchen and who is known in our house as "the messiest cook ever" (which is saying a lot because we let Liam and Josh help with the cooking)... this was even a big mess for me.
I'd like to say that the rest of the project went well, but it didn't. I realized we had used white sugar instead of brown. I realized that Liam had put too much flour in the mix (surprise) and when we made the strudel topping we used mushy butter instead of "firm" as directed and it just wasn't so crumbly. I put the ill-fated muffins into the oven and looked over at the sink full of utensils and baking dishes.
Then I realized it was just about time to cook dinner. By the time I was done with the dishes and disinfecting the drawer, I felt just about "done" with cooking for the night. Still, I put together some spaghetti with meatballs... only I didn't have the energy to make meatballs, I burnt the meat because I was writing this blog post and I realized too late that the only pasta we had was gluten-free corn pasta my mom had left here (blah!). By this point in time, I could hardly care so I just used whatever was left of our elbows, penne and tri-colored rigatoni mixed together.
Here are a few final thoughts:
* Thank God I didn't have PMS!
* It is true that I am a messier cook than my children are at their current ages (it can only get worse).
* Next time, I should wear an apron (and for that matter, so should they).
* Next time I decide to bake and cook in the same night, I will set up a video camera and send in the tape as an audition for Worst Cooks in America.
* I will never again laugh at the cooks who end up on Worst Cooks in America.
* Thank God my husband not only knows how to cook, but is quite good at it.
* If I let the kids cook with me, will they become better cooks because of their experience in the kitchen or will they learn all of my bad habits from me?
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