a memorable thanksgiving...

today's blog is dedicated to larry and tracie swanson. they were our first "couple" friends and have the dubious distinction of being the guests at our first thanksgiving meal. just so you know, they are still alive...

so today . . . is thanksgiving eve. and i think the time has come to tell you about the first time i cooked thanksgiving dinner. all. by. myself...

when rollie and i got married, we were really young--probably too young to be making such huge life decisions. i had very little real life experience. i went from living with my mom and dad, to living in a dorm room, to living with rollie. and while i knew how to dust and vacuum and clean the bathroom (thank you for making me do chores, mom!) i didn't really know how to cook. when i lived at home, my dad always made oatmeal for our breakfast (sometimes chocolate oatmeal! thank you dad!) we all ate hot lunch at our respective schools, and my mom cooked dinner. and then i went away to college and discovered the joys of saga food services! choices, choices, choices, and none of them required me to get near a stove!! so basically, rollie married someone who could bake chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread...

but when our first thanksgiving rolled around, i decided i wanted to cook a big thanksgiving dinner. mostly i decided this because our thanksgiving vacation was only four days long which really didn't leave us enough time to go home for thanksgiving. so even though my foray into providing meals for our new family had pretty much consisted of kraft macaroni and cheese and hamburger helpers, i was prepared to do whatever i had to do to make our first thanksgiving memorable...

... and it was. but not for the reasons you might think...

it started right after halloween. i got out the cookbooks people had thoughtfully given us for wedding gifts and started planning. i made a menu. i made a grocery list. i made a timeline. because as anyone who has ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner knows, you need a timeline. thanksgiving dinner does not just happen, people--it takes planning! i'm not so sure i realized this before... it seemed like all my previous thanksgiving dinners had just sort of appeared. i guess that's what happens when you aren't the grownup responsible for feeding the hungry hoard of family members. but this year, it was all up to me.

we were on an extremely tight budget when we were first married. extremely tight. i'm pretty sure that is why we ate so much kraft macaroni and cheese, because i could buy four boxes for a dollar. so going to the grocery store and buying whatever i needed all in one week was not an option. i had to divide the list so i could buy the non-perishable items early and watch for the best deal on a frozen turkey. it became clear to me, as i pushed my shopping cart up and down the grocery store aisles, that i was not going to be able to afford everything on my list. i was going to have to make choices...

but this was our first thanksgiving! i wanted it to be memorable! so i started looking for cheaper alternatives. as i was comparing prices, the first thing i noticed was that those bags of dried bread cubes that the stuffing recipe called for were kind of expensive. but i needed dried bread cubes if i was going to make stuffing. but i couldn't afford the dried bread cubes. so i decided to make my own. bread was cheap. i figured i could buy a couple of loaves of bread, cut the slices up into cubes, dry them, and ta-da! i would have bread cubes for my stuffing.

and that is exactly what i did. it took me one whole afternoon, but i cut up three loaves of bread (because i wanted to make sure i had enough) into tiny, half inch cubes. then i spread them out on every cookie sheet i had. i discovered that i didn't have enough cookie sheets, so i put aluminum foil on every horizontal surface i could find and covered it with soft bread cubes. and then i waited for them to dry...

i did all of this several days before thanksgiving, because i had no idea how long it was going to take bread cubes to dry. and i figured that once they were dry i could bag them up and save them until the big day. plus, i knew it was going to be a lot of work to cook thanksgiving dinner, and this was one thing i could do early...

and then there was the turkey. i was used to buying meat one pound of hamburger at a time--which i would then divide into thirds and use when making hamburger helper (i told you, our budget was TIGHT!) but i had decided we needed at least a 20 pound turkey! (yes, i know there were only two of us, but the bigger the bird, the more meat. right?) thankfully(?) our freezer was nearly empty. so once i found a grocery store where i could buy a turkey for about 10 cents a pound (if i bought $25 worth of other groceries, which is about all i had,) i rooted around in the frozen turkey bin until i found the biggest turkey they had--a 23 pound bird! i put that thing in my cart, feeling like i had hit the jackpot, and headed home to try to cram it into my freezer.

a 23 pound turkey is pretty big. especially when you live in a basement apartment and your refrigerator has a small freezer...

i finally got the bird tucked away, lined up the rest of my cans and boxes of food, smiled at my drying bread cubes, and waited for thanksgiving...

i say waited, but i was busy! i was still going to classes, doing homework, trying to figure out what i could make for dinner each night with a can of tuna fish, and turning my bread cubes over so that they would dry evenly and quickly.

the weekend before thanksgiving i was talking to my mom on the phone, and i was telling her about my plans for our thanksgiving meal. my biggest worry was how i was going to get everything ready to eat at the same time! i had quite a menu planned and only one oven, which i was pretty sure was going to be filled up with turkey. "well," my mom said, "whatever you do, don't make your own stuffing! just use the stove top stuffing."

just use the stove top stuffing? what was stove top stuffing, and why didn't i know about it?!?! i didn't know about it, because i was never in the kitchen when the actual cooking was happening. "you know, stove top stuffing," my mom continued. "you buy it in a box at the grocery store. then you just boil water, empty the package into the boiling water, cover it and wait a few minutes, and you have stuffing!"

this would have been good to know. it would have been especially good to know before i had spent the last several days cubing bread slices and babysitting them so that they would dry evenly. i looked around my kitchen at my 5, 386 nearly dry bread cubes and said, "i think it might be too late for stove top stuffing..." i quickly recovered. "besides," i continued, "i want to make real stuffing, the kind that goes inside the turkey. this is our first thanksgiving, and i want it to be memorable."

there was that word again...

when i finished up my classes on the day before thanksgiving, i decided i should get out my menu for the next day and get organized. and, i thought, it was probably time to take the turkey out of the freezer so it could thaw...

yep, my 23 pound turkey was still in the freezer, frozen as solid as a rock! blissfully ignorant, i took it out of the freezer and plopped in into the kitchen sink to thaw. hmmm, i thought, i should probably get out the cookbook and find out how long it was going to take to cook the turkey. we had invited company over for thanksgiving dinner, and i wanted to make sure everything was done at the same time. i flipped through the cookbook, and that's when i saw it. that's when i saw how long it takes to thaw a 23 pound frozen turkey!

we were in biiiig trouble!

i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening thawing that big hunk of meat! that turkey had more warm baths than a messy toddler! i dunked it in warm water. i ran water inside it. and that's when i found the bag of giblets. "what's this?" i said to rollie. (it should be noted here that rollie knew exactly what it was, while i didn't have a clue. in hindsight, perhaps he should have been the one cooking thanksgiving dinner...) he removed the bag of giblets, (because there was no way i was touching that!) and i continued pouring water inside the thawing turkey. finally, around midnight, i decided the bird was thawed enough, because i needed to go to bed! i had a lot of cooking to do the next day, and according the the cookbook, a 23 pound stuffed turkey was going to take several hours to cook, which meant i was going to have to get up about 4 a.m.

i felt like overall, things were progressing nicely. my jello salad was made. the bread cubes were hard as rocks (which i hoped was a good thing!) i had a bag of frozen corn and a bag of frozen peas ready to be microwaved. my pumpkin and peach pies were done (i told you i could bake--it's cooking that gives me grief!) and delicious squishy dinner rolls were ready to be warmed and served. i was pretty sure the only thing that had the potential to ruin my memorable first thanksgiving was that turkey...

i got up at 4 a.m. so did rollie. actually, rollie is probably the one who woke up first and had to drag me into the kitchen. i pulled out the biggest bowl i had and mixed up the stuffing. (it may surprise you to learn that i had waaaay more dried bread cubes than i needed. clearly i did not have an accurate picture of the size of the inside of a turkey... even a 23 pound turkey.) when i got out the roasting pan and the brown-in bag, i saw that there were instructions with the brown-in bag... and those instructions said that if i cooked my stuffed turkey in the brown-in bag, it would only take 4-5 hours...

did i mention it was 4 a.m.?

our company wasn't coming until early afternoon, so i put the stupid turkey in the stupid brown-in bag, put the whole stupid thing back in the stupid refrigerator and went back to bed...

around noon, it looked like things were finally coming together. the turkey was smelling really good. i had disposed of the extra bread cubes. the table was set. it was time to make the sweet potato balls.

sweet potato balls are a family tradition. we had had sweet potato balls at every thanksgiving i could remember, although again, i had never actually been involved in making them. but how hard could it be? take a big marshmallow, cover it with mashed up canned sweet potatoes, roll the ball in crushed corn flakes, and bake! time was getting short, so rollie was helping me. "what are these?" he asked. "sweet potato balls! we have them every year at thanksgiving!" "are they good?" he asked. "i guess so," i answered. "i don't like sweet potatoes, so i never eat them." "then why are we having them if you don't like them?" he asked.

he sure was asking a lot of questions!

"because," i explained, "it's thanksgiving, and we always have them at thanksgiving. don't you like them?" "well," he said, "i don't know. i don't really like sweet potatoes either..." so there we were, our hands covered in sweet potato goo and crushed cornflakes, making something that neither one of us liked. "maybe larry or tracie will like them," i said. "let's hope so," rollie replied...

we took the turkey out of the oven and reset it for the sweet potato balls. we carefully cut the brown-in bag off, and i started to scoop out the stuffing. it was looking pretty good! and it smelled delicious!! maybe i was going to be able to pull off this thanksgiving dinner thing after all. rollie started slicing up the turkey while i finished up the other food.'

"uh, julie?" he said. "yes?" i answered. and then he said, "i think there is something wrong with the turkey."

these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving, especially when you have company arriving at any minute. these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving when you have pretty much spent your whole grocery budget on this one meal, hoping to live on the leftovers for a while. these are not the words you want to hear on your first thanksgiving, when all you wanted was for it to be memorable.

i was afraid to look. rollie kept poking around, and then he reached down into the bird and held something up. "what is that?!?!?!" i asked, horrified, looking at the brown, drippy mass in his hand. he said, "i think it is more of the giblet stuff..."

who knew that a turkey had TWO secret compartments where giblet stuff could be hidden...

i learned a lot our first thanksgiving. i learned that thanksgiving dinner isn't just a meal, it is a week long ordeal. i learned that if you have to get up at 4 a.m. it is easier if someone else gets up with you. i learned that you don't have to cook the same amount of food to feed four people that your mother cooked to fed thirty or forty!

and i learned that the most memorable things are sometimes the ones that don't go exactly according to plan...

oh, and when cooking a turkey, look out! there are giblets in both ends!!

adventures in cooking #1

so today . . . i cooked. it wasn't pretty.

i have this brand new lovely kitchen. it has new cherry cabinets. it has wood laminate flooring. it has stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. it has big windows and is open to the family room. it is beautiful! i love to be in it, so i've decided i should start cooking again.

i actually decided this about five or six weeks ago. it was one of those nights after rollie was staying at the new house, but i was still packing up the old house. all alone. which was ok--i didn't really want rollie to help me pack, because i knew at that point his idea of packing was going to be to throw everything into the dumpster! so i was all alone in a big, not empty enough, very quiet house, but nothing was getting packed. i just kept walking from room to room, picking things up, moving them around, but making no progress. i needed noise.

i cannot explain it, but my brain seems to need noise to function properly. which was a problem, because all the tvs that could get hd programming were gone. all i had left was the small, old tv that i used in the scary room, and it was not hd ready! it only got one channel. but luckily the channel it got was shopping tv! so i flipped it on, and started packing boxes...

i was packing boxes with half my brain, but the other half was watching shopping tv. nine o'clock rolled around, which is midnight in florida. this meant it was time for a new "today's special!" so i stopped for a minute to watch. and guess what? the new "today's special" was a set of cookware. and it came in red...

i have cookware. i got most of it as wedding gifts, so it is kind of old. but it is still in pretty good condition, because, you know, i don't use it all that often. but this new cookware had clear glass lids (the better to see what you are cooking, my dear!) a new type of ceramic non-stick interior surface (good for temperatures up to 850 degrees!!) and did i mention it was red? and sparkly? clearly this cookware was made for me.

i texted rollie--"i think if i am going to start cooking in our beautiful new kitchen, i need new pans. red ones." he replied, "ok."

ok?!?! what kind of a response is that?? i needed clarification.

"what do you mean, ok? do you mean it's ok with you if i buy them? or do you mean ok YOU will buy them? or do you mean ok, yeah, i'll believe it when i see it?!?"

and his response? "yes." (there was also a goofy smiley icon with weird eyes and the tongue sticking out. sadly for you, i can't figure out how to get that into my blog.)

"ok, then i'll take that as a yes! thank you!!"

this was a bluff. because here's how the finances work in our household--rollie keeps track of the money and pays the bills, and i don't worry about it. (although there are written instructions in case something happens to him-like he gets lost in the bermuda triangle, which could happen-and then i would have to keep track of the money and pay the bills.) i used to keep track of the money and pay the bills, but mostly i would spend it. so this way works out much better. which is why i was checking with him before purchasing a new set of cookware.

"well," he texted, "you are working and have some money to spend... or how about this? how about if i buy them after the third home-cooked meal in the new house."

he is so funny...

"it will be too late by then! they will be sold out! but you are right. i chose to buy shoes and jewelry instead... and it isn't like i don't have pans... or like i actually use them..."

i know you can't technically hear 'tone of voice' in a text, but i am pretty sure he detected my not so cleverly hidden whining and sighing. ever mindful of my feelings, he texted back. "oh, it's a sale. ok, how about if you buy them tonight, and i will reimburse you after the third meal you cook in them?"

i was beginning to think he didn't believe me when i said i was going to start cooking more. and clearly he had forgotten that it was summer, which meant i wasn't working OR getting a paycheck. i mean, i had money, but i might need it for something... like, like, well you know, SOMETHING...

i finally ordered the cookware, and it came while we were on vacation. but after we got home from vacation, i was busy still unpacking boxes, and then we had to leave on a business trip, and then my mom and dad came... so not a lot of cooking was been going on...

which brings us to tonight. we had planned to take my mom and dad to eat at ruby's in seal beach. it sits on the end of the pier, and the food is really good, and i thought it would be fun to be at the beach and drink a milkshake! but it was cloudy all day today. all day!! not a great day to go eat at the beach. and rollie was feeling a little under the weather. and my dad had his nose in a book. and my mom and i were learning how to use our new electronic devices. so we decided to eat at home.

we have eaten at home some since they got here--mostly bologna sandwiches. WHICH WE LIKE!! but this was dinner, so i thought it should be hot. and yet, we were all kind of busy... so, toasted cheese sandwiches it was!

i got out the bread and the cheese and the butter. i unlocked the cooktop and turned it on. i got out my new frying pan :-) and proceeded to make toasted cheese sandwiches for my dad and rollie, because yes, this frying pan was big enough to make two toasted cheese sandwiches at once!

here is how i make toasted cheese sandwiches--i butter one piece of bread and plop it in the pan. then i slice the cheese and put it on top. and then i butter the other piece of bread and put it on top of the cheese. then i flip it. typically this works. but tonight was not typical...

because you see, not only had i never before used this particular frying pan, i had also never before used this particular burner on my cooktop, which meant i wasn't quite sure how hot was hot enough. apparently "7" was too hot. because no sooner had i finished constructing the second sandwich for my dad, than i thought there was an awful lot of smoke coming from the first sandwich.

"quick," i said to my mom, who happened to be standing in front of the utensil drawer (because how would she know that was the utensil drawer--we hadn't used any utensils!) "move! i need to get the spatula!" (i never know if spatula is the right word for that flat thing you use to turn stuff over with. i've always called it a pancake turner, but it seems kind of odd to call it a pancake turner when using it to flip an egg or a hamburger or a toasted cheese sandwich.) i opened the utensil drawer only to find... wooden spoons. no spatulas. or pancake turners. and then i remembered...

when diandra moved back in with us three years ago, some of her kitchen utensils were much better than mine (obviously, since i had been "using" mine for over 25 years!) so i had just tossed my old ones out and replaced them with her new ones. but now that she was planning to move out again, i had packed her newish utensils with her stuff. which meant that i had no spatula. or pancake turner. what i did have was a smoking pile of bread, butter, and cheese and nothing to flip it with.

i grabbed the only thing i could find. the cheese slicer. it was small, but at least it was flat. it was not however, a spatula. or a pancake turner. i tried to flip the sandwich only to have everything slide off to one side...

oh nonononono! i cannot have a misaligned toasted cheese sandwich! it might be burned, but those bread edges were going to line up properly and that cheese was going to stay inside! i flicked the now burned piece of bread repeatedly until everything was square, and then repeated the process with my dad's sandwich, which was also threatening to burn.

"you might want to turn the heat down a little," said my mom.

she is obviously the cook in the family.

it hadn't even occurred to me to turn down the heat. i was just trying to keep the sandwiches moving so that at least the second side wouldn't be burned. after her suggestion, i turned the burner down to "5"...

i've been cooking on a gas stove top for the last 20 years. on a gas stove top when you turn the flame down, it is immediately cooler. this is not true of an electric burner. electric burners take a while to cool down--especially if you have already heated them up to "7."

my dad's sandwich wasn't too bad. i can't say the same for rollie's. my mom (bless her little pink heart,) said, "why don't i eat that one, and you can make rollie another one." ok i thought, i've got the hang of this now. surely if i make a third sandwich, it will be perfect...

so i turned the burner down, buttered another piece of bread, and proceeded to make another toasted cheese sandwich, thinking "third time's a charm..."

sadly, it wasn't. not even close.but the good news is, i've now cooked in my new pans three times--i made toasted cheese sandwiches tonight, and i've boiled eggs. twice.

the bad news is, i appear to have forgotten how to cook!

i'm pretty sure that even though i have new, red, sparkly pans in my cupboard, they are not going to forget our names at rubio's...

hey! it isn't as easy as it sounds!!

so today . . . i was all prepared to tell you that i am going to take the rest of the month of march off. it has been crazy, between sickness and traveling out of town for business and a wedding and pre-k evaluations and helping rollie find the perfect sofa for his office... i have to say that there isn't much funny happening in my life right now--i can't even make funny stuff up!! (which is not to say that i make stuff up for my blog. i don't. everything you read on here is 100% true...) i sit down and write "so today..." and then... nothing.

i don't like to take a vacation from blogging, because i have found that if i take too many days off, i have a terrible time putting my brain back into blogging mode. but the truth is, blogging takes a lot of brain power, and right now my brain is otherwise occupied.

march 2011 is the month that is threatening to put me away. the straight jacket is dancing outside my window. there is so much going on, that my brain is just refusing to do much except keep my lungs breathing and my blood pumping. and so, i am giving myself permission to take a break until april...

at least, that was my plan. and then tonight i tried to boil water for eggs...

i can cook. really, i can. i just don't like to do it. i hate it more than i hate doing laundry--and i am not a big fan of laundry. (actually, i don't mind washing and drying the laundry, but the folding and putting away? not my favorite thing to do...) but since we eat those hard boiled eggs for breakfast most mornings, boiling them is a regular task. it has to be done almost every week. and yet, it is never easy.

i know i have written about the whole egg boiling thing before. but the problem is this--if i put water on to boil, and walk out of the kitchen, i will totally forget i am boiling water. i have boiled a 3 quart pan bone dry. more than once. do you know how long that takes?!? but if i stay in the kitchen to wait for it to boil, it takes FOREVER!!! and i lose interest before those little bubbles start popping to the surface, and wander away, only to later discover a very hot, dry pan on my stove.

don't worry. we have smoke detectors. and they work...

once i manage to actually catch the pan with boiling water still in it, i can plop the eggs in, set the timer, and the rest is easy. the hard part is boiling the water...

(i'm sure there is a joke in there, i am just too tired to make the connection.)

yesterday after church, a friend of mine was talking about how she was so excited to go home, because she had some sort of delicious, nutricious (i'm sure it was nutricious--she is a vegetarian,) soup in the crock pot. she could hardly wait to eat the wonderful yumminess. i could tell, her mouth was watering. i looked at her and said, "that's how i feel about my frozen hot pockets." i'm not sure she even knows what a hot pocket is!

my plan, when we move, is to cook more often. even though i hate it. because the truth is, i am getting a little tired of rubio's...

and yet, my plans are not always successful. i've been planning to exercise regularly for the last ten years! i think about it, i prepare to do it, i talk about it, but i still find myself sitting on the couch instead of pumping iron.

i am an excellent planner, but a mediocre implementer--as is evidenced by my plan not to blog in march. because here it is, march 7th, and what am i doing??

i am writing a blog.

so maybe i will actually cook more often after we move. maybe i will actually use my pilates machine a few times a week.

maybe pigs will fly...

;-)

breakfast? or a science experiment gone terribly wrong...

so today . . . rollie is in san diego.

i know, we just got back from being out of town, but there are a lot of meetings he has to attend at this time of year. and so he was home sunday and monday (well, actually he wasn't home on monday--he was at work until 10:30 p.m.!) and then he had to leave early this morning to go to san diego for the rest of the week. (don't worry, it isn't always going to be this hectic...) so when he left, i was still in bed, trying to climb out of a deep sleep and into reality. obviously, we didn't exactly have a conversation. rollie pretty much said he was leaving, and i said uh huh, without actually opening my eyes. he left. i blindly found my way into the shower, and then managed to finally wake up enough to get to school.

midway through the morning, i got this text from rollie--"okay, my wisdom to you today is this: apparently not all boiled eggs are microwave-ready." hmmm, i thought. that was an interesting choice of wisdom to impart. i would have expected something a little more profound. perhaps, i thought, he is still jet lagged.

even though we both eat hard boiled eggs for breakfast, this did not seem like vital information for me to have. i eat them because they are quick--i can grab one out of the refrigerator, throw it into my school bag, and head out the door. then when i get settled at school, i can peel it and eat it, and i don't have to get up 15 minutes earlier to give myself time to eat a real breakfast. rollie eats them because they are part of his healthy breakfast of eggs, cheese, and almonds. but rollie likes his hard boiled egg to be a little warm (i find this pretty gross, but then, he thinks pepper jack cheese is an abomination, so we've learned to be tolerant...) to accomplish warmness in a previously boiled and refrigerated egg, he peels it, and then sticks it in the microwave for a few seconds. he has been doing this for a long time. until today.

today apparently he peeled his egg, put it in the microwave, and when he opened the door a few seconds later, this is what he saw...

he sent me the picture, and then texted, "this was my breakfast."

i died. i laughed and laughed and laughed. i could just picture it... and so i texted back, "HAHAHAHAHA! oh boy... i hope your lunch is better." and then, we finally had a "conversation..."

"i'm glad my disaster gave you a chuckle."

"well, it was a pretty dramatic photo."

"why thank you. hard to believe i am an amateur, isn't it?"

"clearly you are an amateur egg heater upper."

"i was in a hurry!!"

"oh, so it wasn't the egg's fault then? the mess was due to operator error??"

"no wait, you are right--defective egg."

"uh huh..."

"at least i cleaned it up."

"believe me, when i saw the photo, i was grateful for that!!"

"took me ten minutes!"

this is the sort of thing that happens when we cook. perhaps our new house doesn't really need a kitchen. perhaps food preparation should be left to the professionals.

perhaps we should just permanently reserve a table at rubio's...

hey...stuff happens...

so today . . . we may discover the answer to that burning question, "how long is too long to boil an egg?"

rollie eats a lot of boiled eggs. usually he boils his own, 18 at a time. he has it down to a science--boil water in the biggest saucepan we have, gently lower 18 eggs into the boiling water, boil for 12 minutes exactly, remove from heat and douse with cold water, and refrigerate. this results in perfectly boiled eggs with lovely bright yellow centers. i know there are other methods, but this is the way he does it, and it works! every. single. time.

last night i went into the kitchen for a handful of nuts (which is my healthy substitute for chips. although i am not sure how healthy it is when i eat 12 handfuls a day...) and i noticed the egg box was on the counter. this tells me that we are out of boiled eggs, and rollie is planning to boil some in the morning. which is a perfectly good plan.

except...

... i suddenly decided to be susie homemaker and boil his eggs for him! yes, i love him that much! just think, i think to myself, how surprised and happy he will be when he gets up for breakfast and the eggs are already boiled. i got out the big saucepan, filled it with water, and put it on to boil. i even took the eggs out of the refrigerator so they would warm up a little to avoid unnecessary cracking! (see, i know how to cook!) i gently lowered the eggs into the boiling water and started to set the timer.

but there was a problem--two actually. first of all, i kind of forgot about the water boiling, so by the time i put the eggs in, the water level was just a little bit low. i decided it was ok--only a few egg tops were poking out of the water, and i thought i would just flip them over halfway through the cooking time and they would be fine.

the second problem was the cooking time. i didn't want to set the timer, because rollie was sleeping and i wanted the eggs to be a surprise. so i just looked at my watch, took note of the time, and headed back to my computer and my blog.

later i went into the kitchen for more nuts (no, it isn't an addiction! they are just nuts!!) and saw the pan on the stove... uh oh... i looked at my watch. it had been 40 minutes since i put the eggs in the water! forty minutes!!! i grabbed the pan and put it in the sink, thinking that maybe if i ran enough cold water over the eggs they would be fine. really. surely they would be fine. i mean, once an egg is hard-boiled you can't burn it, can you??

you see, this is why i don't cook. cooking requires a certain amount of attention to the task. cooking requires me to stay in the kitchen. if i walk out of the kitchen, i totally forget that i am cooking. i am the poster child for "out of sight, out of mind," especially when it comes to certain tasks...

the eggs are still cooling in the sink. now i just have to decide whether to crack one open myself to assess the damage, or leave them for rollie to discover.

i did, after all, want to surprise him...