Kitchen Blooper Reel # 2

Why not share some more crazy moments in the kitchen with you? After all, we all have these moments in life, whether it is in the kitchen or somewhere else entirely. Things don’t always go as smoothly as we hoped…

These are just a few funny moments I have caught on camera since yesterday….though maybe not so funny to me at the time. 🙂

• I was making a homemade salad dressing last night and somehow I knocked the open bottle of grape seed oil onto the ground. Even funnier is that I was in a rush and didn’t have time to clean it up, so I finished cooking with it all over the floor, having to hop over it time and time again. I don’t know how I managed to not step in it! When my hubby came downstairs to get me so we could leave, he was sweet enough to cover my mess up until we could get come and clean it.

• Also while I was making the dressing, I managed to miss the bowl and much of my avocado landed on the stove instead. If it had been a clean area where it landed, I would have just used it anyway. But well…it wasn’t. 🙂

• I was trying to zest an orange this morning, and I didn’t understand why it didn’t seem to be working and looked so different than last time. So, I went upstairs and showed my hubby, and like I knew he would, he had the answer. He said something like, “Why aren’t you using the zester? that’s not going to zest the orange, that’s just peeling it.” I don’t know if I wanted to laugh really hard or just cry! 🙂

Ah, now this is what zest is supposed to look like!

• As I was trying to throw out what was left of my thoroughly squeezed and zested oranges, somehow I managed to leak orange juice all over my foot. My Crocs have become my shoe of choice in the kitchen, because it truly is dangerous to walk barefoot in there. These are easy shoes to clean off, so I am so glad I wasn’t wearing one of my favorite pairs of shoes. But at the moment, I am a little bummed I was wearing a shoe that has holes in the top, because now the bottom of my foot is completely sticky. 🙂

And I just noticed that as I am sitting here writing this, my arm is sticking to my shorts. Yep, honey plastered all down my forearm. I really have no idea how things like this happen! 🙂

 

 

Fresh Basil

I always use fresh basil and love it, but this new stuff we got the other day that is grown near where we live has such a full flavor! Honestly, I have never tasted a basil leaf that is so flavorful!

You put it in a jar, keep an inch of water in it, and it keeps it alive. I am guessing that’s why it tastes so wonderful. You just pull off some leaves when you are ready to cook!

Blooper Reel

As someone who has only been cooking for less than 2 months, I think I have a lot more crazy things happen in the kitchen than others of you who have been cooking for much longer. At least, that’s my hope! 🙂 So far, the kitchen has withstood all the craziness…sometimes I think barely. And my hubby has been so gracious as he encourages me and watches me “create” and “make a mess” and sometimes even “destroy!” 🙂

So today you get to read my “Blooper Reel”…at least, the things I can remember of it. I truly wish you could watch it on video, because I am pretty sure words on a screen won’t due it justice.

My reasons for sharing it are as follows:

• To put a smile on some of your faces today.
• To just be honest that even when I post recipes that have come out great, there is a “Behind the Scenes” that exists that is not always pretty. A lot of times we only see the good stuff on blogs, facebook, etc, so I thought I would share some of the ugly, in case someone would be encouraged by it today. (Patty Nguyen, over at her food blog, was part of what inspired me to do this…Patty, I loved your honesty about the glaze all over the carpet! I told you that you were not alone! 🙂 )
• Mostly, I hope for this to be an encouragement to those like me who are just starting out on their cooking adventures. There are many challenges along the way, things don’t always turn out the way you hope, things get messy, you may ruin a few cooking utensils…but don’t give up.

Without further ado, the “Blooper Reel”:

• I have melted parts of one spatula….who knew you couldn’t just leave it resting against the hot skillet?!
• I have broken two other spatulas:

• I recently dropped an open can of black beans on the floor, leaving mass amounts of brown liquid everywhere.
• I doubled a recipe the other day before I checked that I had all the ingredients…let’s just say that I had to throw it out and start all over.
• Last night when I was cleaning the kitchen, I had at least 6 chocolate chips rolling around the kitchen floor, one so glued to it that I still haven’t been able to get it up. 🙂 Not to mention the kale, cheese, and wet flour…it is kind of a danger zone for your feet where you seriously want to be wearing something to protect them.
• There are currently at least 8 large spots on our counters where honey seems to be cemented on, 1 spot where I normally keep the honey stored, and even our camera hasn’t been able to escape harm. And just in case you thought that was the complete story with the honey, here is a current picture of the honey container:

• And lastly, but certainly not least… The other night I was attempting to make the Almond Flavored Cookie Dough Balls with Dark Chocolate Chips and I couldn’t understand why I kept needing to put more and more of the pure almond extract in. No matter how much I put in, it just didn’t taste right. And the more I put in, the worse it seemed to get. (A side note here: my hubby had just picked me up a couple bottles of some different things that I needed.) I noticed that the new bottle had brown liquid instead of clear, which I thought was weird. But remember, I have only been cooking for less than 2 months; I figured almond extract just came several different ways. This was my lesson in reading the bottle labels, because I was pouring tons of vanilla into the bowl instead of almond. The result:  I had to remake the recipe yesterday, I wasted tons of my new vanilla, and the very, very vanilla tasting dough still remains in our refrigerator. 🙂

Some of us may have more mishaps than others, but none of us will ever be “perfect” in the kitchen, or anywhere else for that matter. That said, I thought I would finish out with this quote that I love from Brene Brown: “Perfectionism crushes creativity-which is why one of the most effective ways to start recovering from perfectionism is to start creating.”

Let’s create!!!

Failure Has to be an Option

“If we want to reignite innovation and passion, we have to rehumanize work. When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation.” -Brene Brown

I don’t doubt for a second that it was not a coincidence that I read this quote tonight after having attempted to create a meal that totally bombed. It was a fresh reminder that creativity and failure go hand in hand. If we are not willing to step out and risk failing, then we will miss out on much beauty!

Here are a couple pictures of my recent “failed” attempts at something yummy… 🙂

Recipes- A Change

I have decided it is going to be easier for me (and maybe for you as well) in the long run if I put the recipes in the original post where I write about them.There will still be a recipe page that will have a listing of them in alphabetical order under “Breakfast”, “Lunch,” “Dinner,” etc. for quick links to each recipe. When you click on the recipe, instead of it leading you to a word document to download, it will now send you to the original post with the recipe in it.

I am in the process of switching this over, but it will take me a while, so don’t be surprised if you only see this for some recipes right now.

The Recipes

Some of you have asked me for the recipes to these dishes, so I have made another page that is called “Recipes” that you will find at the top of the blog next to “My Story” and “Home.” Click on that and it will bring you to the page with all the recipes which I am currently working on getting up there, sorted so far by breakfast, dinner, sides, and snacks.

So far, none of these recipes are “Lori Originals” :-), so if I can remember where I came across them, I will make sure to note that in the recipe. I have typed up the recipes into word documents that will pop up when you click on the recipe name, which will hopefully make it easy to print for you.

Enjoy!

My New Favorite Toy

I love using fresh garlic! It is amazing what a difference it makes in your meals! Since I have started this adventure, I am always chopping up garlic… for breakfast, for sides, for dinners. A few things I want to note:

• Have you ever noticed how sticky the paper is on your hands when you are trying to get down to the actual garlic?
• It takes me forever to chop a clove of garlic, no less 2 or 3 or 4 or 5.
• Because I am new at this whole chopping thing, I never seem to get the pieces as small as I would like.

All that to say, Doug introduced me to my new favorite toy in the kitchen: a garlic press! I had never even heard of one and since we never used fresh garlic, we certainly didn’t have one in the house. So, thanks to my hubby’s awesome suggestion and Kitchen Collection, here is my new garlic press:

The extra wonderful thing about this one is that after breaking up the garlic clove, I don’t have to peel anything! I just put the little piece, peel and all, in the press and somehow it only pushes the garlic out! Love, love, love this!

And the end result: finely chopped garlic! Woohoo!

Photography + Cooking :-)

Doug snapped this behind the scenes photo of me….it is so fun to bring my love of photography into my new adventures of cooking! 🙂

Tornado in the Kitchen

One thing Doug and I certainly don’t miss from our time in St. Louis are the tornadoes. However, recently Doug has been reintroduced to them, because so far I am like a tornado when I cook! 🙂 No joke!

Every counter is covered, drawers are left open, things are splattered, food is on the ground, and more dishes than are probably necessary to make the meal are everywhere!

I don’t know how many cutting boards people normally use when they cook, but I use them ALL! If they are clean, somehow I will use every single one of them….and we have more than a few!

And just in case you thought I was exaggerating, here is some evidence of some food that made its home on the ground.

As you can imagine then, cleaning up the kitchen after I cook takes a little lot more work than normal. Sometimes Most of the time it is overwhelming to have to clean afterwards. But I know this is all part of the learning process….learning can sometimes be painful. That said, a big shout out to my hubby who cleaned up the mess last night that the tornado left behind! 🙂

The Mess Behind the Beauty

If I want to be real about this whole process then this picture has to make it onto my blog. 🙂 That yummy tomato basil soup I made? This is the mess I created as I cooked it! Keep in mind that when I took this picture I had already cleaned up a lot of it. Not to mention some of the details you miss from such a large picture: the onions and basil that are on the floor, and the soup that is splattered all over the oven and counters and me!