Culinary Crisis

Oopsie-daisy!

The post the other night about my driving misfortunes led me to think about my cooking disasters, of which there have also been quite a few. Maybe i should be marrying a chef? Is it possible to have a double degree in mechanics and cooking? Probably... but i think i'd be hard pressed to find such a guy in little old Adelaide. Hey! There's the excuse i can give my parents to travel - i have to find a decent mechanic/chef to marry, or else i'll live in a constant state of disaster :P I like it.

Do you want to hear about some of my forrays into the world of edibles? Well, i'm going to tell you anyway, seeing as my only other task tonight is to put off finishing my Classics Odyssey notes and to stop thinking about the creepy things i just saw in Saw III. So this is a nice distraction.

I remember, back in the days when i tried to juggle both french and chinese (a baaaad idea for anyone with as little aptitude for the languages as i happen to possess) and i needed to bring a huge batch of Hokkien noodles, cooked with a certain receipe, to out Open Day. It seemed that Mrs. Khut didn't believe my pleas to get out of it, claiming that i would poison half of the school... i wonder if she regrets it now?! :P Anyway, Alisha and i decided we could cook together, just doubling the receipe. Sounded easy enough in theory. However, as the day progressed, we somehow managed to end up with noodles that were fairly swimming in soy sauce. Not quite the plan. Next came the inevitable adding of more noodles - then more liquid - then more noodles... until the balance was close enough to ok. By this stage, there were already a fair amount cooked! Mum was painting the heater at the time (don't ask) and was tied up with that, so, when we somehow managed to catch the handle of the wok alight, there was nobody else around to help us as we threw a jug of water at the noodles... extinguishing the small blaze but doing little to improve our noodles. I tell you, it's lucky we weren't responsible for a large outbreak of food poisoning that weekend.

A few years before that, my buddy Eloise and i decided to try our hand at cake-making, so that we could enter into the cake auction at out P.T.A B.B.Q. Somehow, we ended up with (and i think my mother may have had lots to do with this) a sponge cake and ice-cream cones, nicely arranged into the shape of a castle, turrets and all - i tell you, this was no mean feat! However, what could have ended nicely there, went on to become a monstrosity covered in pale blue icing, smarties, licorice... it's no wonder that the only person to bid on it was my father. He only did so because the two of us were devestated at the idea of losing the cake that we had worked so hard on! Unfortunately, it really wasn't all that nice. I think it was still in the cake tin about two months later (i didn't want mum to throw it away!) until it finally had to go. Now that i think about it, this was the same girl who had joined me to make cookies for the whole class, when i had the bright idea to dye the mixture different colours, to match the different houses :P Yes, i was a rather creative cooker. Not only did the mixture look mouldy (the blue and the green), unhealthy (the yellow) or like someone's uncooked intestines (the red), but i'd forgotten to beat the egg white and had instead just chucked the whole thing in. I really do feel for anyone who has to eat anything i cook!

There was a phase that i went through for a long time, pulling the BigSis and Loz along for the ride, where i was incredibly into making something out of everything and anything that i could find in a cupboard. This ranged from strange liquid concoctions that i proceeded to 'sell' to unsuspecting souls, to the strange pesto-like thing that we made one night... this one included everything -lemons, herbs, qumquats, chilli- from BigSis' garden, as well as every single dried herb or spice in her cupboards. Eventually, after a call to my mother to check whether or not Tumeric was poisonous (it's not, if you were wondering) and a small scare where we caught a paper bag alight and didn't notice until it was almost on top of the gas flame that was burning... we had a spicy condiment-type concoction, that we tried with pizza, were disgusted with and palmed off to BigSis' big sisters. The poor girls.

I recall another incident, this one not all that long ago, when BigSis and i again attempted cooking - this time with an actual receipe! However, our desparate desire to cook meant that we needed to improvise slightly with ingredients. Not a single thing from the cook book could be made from what we had! So, after another call to mum, we enquired as to whether it would be possible to swap corn syrup for golden syrup. After recieving an affirmative, we carried on... only to realise that we didn't actually have golden syrup, only honey. We figured this was close enough. We were wrong. Did you know that toffee made with honey instead of corn syrup actually turns out more like brownies? And not very edible ones at that... ohh dear...

My homeroom had to serve at the Mary Magdalene Centre earlier this year (it was actually a great experience, i recommend it) but i somehow ended up in charge of organsising everything - including food. I know, it was destined for disaster from the word go. This task meant chopping up 200 sausages, cooking them on a bbq, putting them in a large pot and adding plenty of gravy. I swear, it was absolutely foul. It was a 35 degree day, the smell was disgusting, i was almost gagging - noodle was with me, she'll commiserate! It was a long time before i could eat sausages again, that's for sure. But that wasn't the only food-related disaster on the night... i was also making jelly. Four giant tubs turned out fine. But the fifth? Not so much. Did you know that it's a veeeery bad idea to mix normal jelly with quick-set jelly? Well, i'll let you know that it is. You end up with a few layers of sponge-like substance, under a whole lot of liquid. If you do happen to try this DO NOT TASTE THE SPONGE-LIKE STUFF!!! Trust me, it tastes awful - a cross between sponge cake and a wetex. Not nice at all.

Although i make a mean fudge (only three ingredients - hard to stuff up!), i am also the girl who nearly blew up someone's microwave by trying to melt chocolates - without taking them out of the alfoil wrappers... I've even been known to stuff up rice and two-minute noodles! I don't really want to starve to death when i leave home... so maybe i can just be good friends with the chef and marry the mechanic? Hey, my brother hasn't picked a career yet... maybe i can pull some sisterly influences out there.... family rates beat mates rates anyday! Or maybe someone incredibly patient can just teach me :P

Bye!

She-who-shall-eat-no-more :P