Since I've been staying with Matt and Kellie indefinitely, I have hoped to show my appreciation for them by helping out in whatever way possible. Usually there is no way possible for me to be helpful successfully to Kellie because she does things perfectly and I do not. But lately she has been overwhelmed with extra work that stresses her out and makes her a little more flexible on other aspects of housekeeping and hospitality. This, coupled with the fact that she has astonishing confidence in the cooking abilities of a young girl who once mentioned that she thought eggs never go bad because they are preserved in Nature's tupperware, convinced her to make use of the extra pair of hands that have been living in her house. This has usually come in the form of "Amanda, will you make the dessert tonight? I have a brownie mix." That one actually went fairly well. Matt pre-heated the oven for me, which was good since I usually cause a loud explosion at the least when I do that. And I only briefly considered using Pledge to grease the pan until I remembered that the stuff that comes in a can and is sprayed on pans to grease them is actually called "Pam." Of course, I made the mistake of sharing that little anecdote with others around me (like the time I told Emily that I ate brown sugar for breakfast once) and I don't think they will let me live it down. I mean, it's not like I actually DID that... But even that little incident did not shake Kellie's confidence in me.
This morning I woke up, went walking in the park (I'm planning to write a detailed comparison between parks in China and the Middle East sometime soon...make a note of that, it will be ground-breaking), and then came back to get a drink of water in the kitchen, and noticed that there was a note and lots of cooking stuff out on the table. I remembered that I'd told Kellie the night before to leave me a note if she wanted me to make something for the meeting today. She had told me there was a really easy cake that I could make. I said, "A mix?" And she said, "Yes." So I figured I was OK. Let me just say that any thing, cake mix or otherwise, that involves egg whites only is not easy. I read her pages of intricate directions and set to work after noticing that the cake needed to be chilled at the end for several hours and I already only had several hours left. Another complication was finding a mixing bowl...after looking around in vain, I decided to use a tupperware (not Nature's tupperware this time) top of one of those things that you carry a round cake in to parties or wherever you carry round cakes. That worked pretty well except for the dent in the top where the handle was connected on the other side...there may have been a small leak or it make have been the extremely powerful electric-turbo whisk that I was using in place of a mixer that caused the excessive puddle on the counter. This "easy" cake also involved making Jello and whipped cream. Those are supposed to be easy too, but they involve boiling and/or cold water and stirring and the box tells you to mix on high for 2 minutes and then on low for 3 minutes...or something like that...I didn't read it that carefully because I never planned to time the mixing...honestly, what is 3 or 50 seconds really going to do to it? Side note: Jello, to me, tastes kind of like kids' chewable Tylenol or something medicinal like that. So I hope the cake and the whipped cream masks that flavor because I know I'll have to eat some of this cake later on at the meeting. I mean, let's be honest, I don't have the most stellar reputation in the kitchen and if I don't eat it, there will be suspicions.
So between pre-heating the oven by myself today...Kellie is not like me (we have established that I think) and she puts things away-like the lighter for the stove. So I thought, since the lighter was no where to be found in the nearby stove vicinity, that make it lit itself...I soon deduced, based on the lack of a flame in the stove, that that wasn't the case. Then I actually looked in the drawer where other random kitchen utensils reside (most of which I don't know what the heck they are), and I found it. Fortunately, I also noticed the regular mixing cups were there because that weird tubey thing that you slide to the measure of something cups or mLs or whatever makes NO sense. (Emily your pampered chef crap is not user-friendly.) And two hours later I found the saran wrap. I was very impressed with myself that I knew that that meant plastic wrap. You should be impressed too-remember, I grew up inAsia . One thing that is also hard is finding things in tall people's kitchens. When stuff is two hundred feet above your eye level, it might as well be invisible.
I'm almost done, but I would like to go back to the egg white thing. What is the point of that? What do you do with the yellow part then? Throw it away? That would be wasteful. Make it into something? That would involve some sort of recipe or prior knowledge of egg yolk cooking. Here’s an alternative: leave them out on the counter in the one-third cup measure. Worked for me…
This morning I woke up, went walking in the park (I'm planning to write a detailed comparison between parks in China and the Middle East sometime soon...make a note of that, it will be ground-breaking), and then came back to get a drink of water in the kitchen, and noticed that there was a note and lots of cooking stuff out on the table. I remembered that I'd told Kellie the night before to leave me a note if she wanted me to make something for the meeting today. She had told me there was a really easy cake that I could make. I said, "A mix?" And she said, "Yes." So I figured I was OK. Let me just say that any thing, cake mix or otherwise, that involves egg whites only is not easy. I read her pages of intricate directions and set to work after noticing that the cake needed to be chilled at the end for several hours and I already only had several hours left. Another complication was finding a mixing bowl...after looking around in vain, I decided to use a tupperware (not Nature's tupperware this time) top of one of those things that you carry a round cake in to parties or wherever you carry round cakes. That worked pretty well except for the dent in the top where the handle was connected on the other side...there may have been a small leak or it make have been the extremely powerful electric-turbo whisk that I was using in place of a mixer that caused the excessive puddle on the counter. This "easy" cake also involved making Jello and whipped cream. Those are supposed to be easy too, but they involve boiling and/or cold water and stirring and the box tells you to mix on high for 2 minutes and then on low for 3 minutes...or something like that...I didn't read it that carefully because I never planned to time the mixing...honestly, what is 3 or 50 seconds really going to do to it? Side note: Jello, to me, tastes kind of like kids' chewable Tylenol or something medicinal like that. So I hope the cake and the whipped cream masks that flavor because I know I'll have to eat some of this cake later on at the meeting. I mean, let's be honest, I don't have the most stellar reputation in the kitchen and if I don't eat it, there will be suspicions.
So between pre-heating the oven by myself today...Kellie is not like me (we have established that I think) and she puts things away-like the lighter for the stove. So I thought, since the lighter was no where to be found in the nearby stove vicinity, that make it lit itself...I soon deduced, based on the lack of a flame in the stove, that that wasn't the case. Then I actually looked in the drawer where other random kitchen utensils reside (most of which I don't know what the heck they are), and I found it. Fortunately, I also noticed the regular mixing cups were there because that weird tubey thing that you slide to the measure of something cups or mLs or whatever makes NO sense. (Emily your pampered chef crap is not user-friendly.) And two hours later I found the saran wrap. I was very impressed with myself that I knew that that meant plastic wrap. You should be impressed too-remember, I grew up in
I'm almost done, but I would like to go back to the egg white thing. What is the point of that? What do you do with the yellow part then? Throw it away? That would be wasteful. Make it into something? That would involve some sort of recipe or prior knowledge of egg yolk cooking. Here’s an alternative: leave them out on the counter in the one-third cup measure. Worked for me…
