Kitchen Wrecks

Well, I've had a few kitchen disasters recently. I suppose it's like anything else...you do it long enough, something bad will happen. You ride horses long enough, you will get thrown off. You play soccer for a long time, you're likely to have an ankle or knee injury. 

Stuff just happens sometimes.

So what did I do?

Well, Saturday, I was making a salad that I wanted to put thinly sliced apples in, so I pulled out my handy-dandy mandolin, that looks a lot like this...

[I'm sure you can already tell where this is going]

I'm always super careful when I use it, and I didn't use the safety guard this time because I knew that I wasn't taking the apple all the way down...just part of the way. 

Well, part of the way was just enough for me to catch my thumb on the blade. I quickly grabbed my thumb with a towel so that I wouldn't get blood on anything, and raced to the bathroom. I washed it off as best I could and then proceeded to put three band-aids on it. And then I bled through those, so I re-wrapped it with three more band-aids and finished it off with some vet-wrap. It's actually healing a lot better than I thought it would, but I have to keep a bandage on it because as it dries, the edges of the cut curl up and the dry skin catches on other things. Grossed out yet?!

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My most gut-wrenching offense occurred Thursday night.

I knew I'd be doing some cooking over the weekend for other things, so I wanted to make a big batch of something that we wouldn't mind eating for a few meals over a few days. I had made lasagna and chili the week before...so those were out. Finally I decided to make a pot of seafood gumbo! It's a lot of work, but it's really one of my favorite meals, and Kyle likes it a lot as well. Win, win!

Thursday after work, I went to the grocery store to get all of the items I would need for the gumbo and all of my weekend cooking. For the gumbo, I purchased some fresh Gulf shrimp, lump crab meat, and organic/natural andouille sausage (not supposed to have the preservatives and nitrates in regular sausage during pregnancy).

When I got home, I started to work on my gumbo. One smart thing that I had done previously, was make a big batch of roux from my last gumbo, and froze a portion of it. This saved me at least 45 minutes. Anyway, I sauteed my vegetables in the roux and slowly added all of my other ingredients, including a stock that I made using the shrimp shells and odd pieces of the onion and bell pepper I had diced earlier. 

The whole process took about two or so hours, but it was worth it. It was tasting awesome, and I knew that it would taste even better the next day...because that's just what gumbo does. 

I set the pot on the counter to cool while I did some other house work, but made sure to keep the kitchen lights on as a reminder to come back in there and put the pot in the refrigerator. My reminder worked because I did remember to go back and put the pot of gumbo in the refrigerator in our laundry room...except I needed to set it on a trivet in the refrigerator because the bottom of the pot was still a little warm.

And that's where it all went to hell in a hand basket. 

I went in the laundry room the next morning to feed Gus, and there on the dryer sat my pretty red dutch oven with all of that gumbo goodness. I had never gone back to get the trivet, and I, therefore, never went back to the laundry room to put the pot in the refrigerator. 

I thought I was going to cry, but I didn't. I just cussed a lot under my breath. 

I haven't felt that stupid in a very long time. Ugh, it still makes me mad!

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On a good note, I did have one kitchen success (sort of) this last weekend. We had a Thanksgiving pot luck with our church group, and I attempted to make my Nana's cornbread dressing. I have to say that it wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn close!!! I think if I had had the drippings from the turkey and added a little more celery, it would have been spot on! Of course, our family always has this huge debate about whether or not there's not enough/too much sage. I erred on the side of 'not enough', but I may be a little more daring next time and add another 1/8 of a teaspoon and see if I get a rise out of anyone ; )