Thursday, March 6, 2008

Food Fundamentals


In my first semester of 9th grade, I had the opportunity to take Food Fundamentals. It was one of my most favorite classes. Mrs. Drier would give us recipes and all the ingredients and our "kitchen" would prepare them, even being allowed to eat them when we were done. I got an A. I thought I was a pretty good cook.

I'm beginning to think that I must've missed some really crucial classes on some days that I was sick. Maybe I should have signed up for "Gourmet on the Run" instead of Honors English. I sure could use a lot more training from a food class right now than my knowledge of Homer and Steinbeck.

In an effort to share my knowledge by experience with others, I would like to present a few things I've learned over these past three weeks:
  • If you would like to heat up milk, do not do it in a teapot. If it gets to the "whistle" stage, it will explode over the kitchen.
  • If you are using a silicon cutting mat on a ceramic stovetop, waiting to put cut-up broccoli in a boiling pot, and you should accidentally turn on the wrong burner, thereby melting your new silicon cutting board onto the ceramic stovetop . . . it will peel off fairly easily if you let it cool.
  • It is not tasty to eat broccoli that has melted silicon on it.
  • If you accidentally drop a paper towel into a pot of spaghetti sauce that is being warmed, take the sauce off of the burner before you take off the lid and try and fish it out. Laugh at the irony that you were using the napkin to clean up little drops of spaghetti sauce that might have spilled out while heating. Throw the napkin dramatically on the stove to show the spaghetti sauce that it cannot overcome you. Clean up the tomato sauce from the spaghetti sauce stand-off from your kitchen for the next 3 days.
  • "Ceramabrite" is a great cleaner for ceramic stovetops that will remove burn marks from milk, silicon cutting boards, spaghetti sauce, or any number of other things that I can find to burn onto my stovetop. I bought it at Home Depot. Well worth the $6.

Brad has been such a good sport and so patient with my learning curve. Hopefully by the end of this "semester" I'll be a little more ahead of the game. Mrs. Drier would be so proud.

7 comments:

Ashley said...

Tip from the Maines kitchen: When popping popcorn on the stove, make sure your pot has a lid with a handle. Otherwise, it can be quite tricky to remove said popcorn from the pot without first removing the burning hot lid. Then again, playing with hot oil is always fun ...

Anonymous said...

This is too funny! Reading it reminded me of my own learning curve I had to overcome when Cullen and I got married almost 13 years ago. Cooking was never something I liked to do...ha - still isn't! Cullen still reminds me of the spaghetti I would serve at least once a week for the first year. What can I say, it was the only thing I knew how to cook. :) Hang in there....

Mary Beth said...

From the Mary Beth kitchen:

Do NOT put a pie plate from the oven on a burner that you THOUGHT was turned off...but was NOT! It will continue to absorb heat up and then suddenly explode into millions of tiny pieces causing glass and chicken pot pie to become the kitchen decor...from ceiling...to walls...to floor.

Maybe Brianna can come and give you a few lessons!

Crystal said...

You made me LOL...and I needed it!!! The first time we had company over for dinner I made homemade sauce and meatballs, but the meatballs caught on fire! I pulled the meatballs quickly out of the oven to save my dinner, but was in such a panic about the fire that I threw an entire 5lb. box of baking soda into the oven to extinguish the fire. It worked, but cleaning up 5lbs. of baking soda took quite a while. Fun Fun!

redheadrev said...

lol! That was hilarious. The solution to this is making your husband cook. It works for me. :)

I saw you from a distance, but never got to meet you at the WIM Breakaway. You should join our social network. michiganag.ning.com

Michelle said...

hahaha. I can't tell you the number of times I've set off the smoke detector... this week. I think the broiler has it out for me!

Anonymous said...

Remember the time I made a pumpkin pie, and it spilled all over the oven, and the smoke detector went off and you and Ashley were sitting on the couch hugging each other, crying and screaming, "we're gonna die!!" ?