The bad luck streak started last week. I was going to a meeting on Tuesday, that was also a potluck. I had signed up to bring bean salsa and oreo truffles. On Sunday, I just said to myself "Self....what are you trying to prove making oreo truffles? Sure...they'd be amazing, but crushing oreos and dipping the finished product in chocolate sounds like a real pain in the rear." Instead, I started flipping thru cookbooks and settled on a cookie bar recipe: Caramel Revel Bars. They were marked as a "really easy recipe that goes over big at potlucks!" Well, sign me right up. Monday nights after work are no time for a fussy recipe.
I'm responsible for picking up one of our two cherubs after work every evening, and anyone that's spent time with a toddler knows full well that it's much easier to get groceries alone. With fifteen short minutes to complete my task, I rush into the grocery store. That's when I realized that A. I have six things on my list. All of them have to do with the Caramel Revel Bars. and B. I had forgotten my cell phone at work. Gah! Any other day I wouldn't care, but the next day's meeting was over an hour away and I seriously needed the GPS application.
Ingredients in tow, I pick up Sean without incident and head home. There my husband sweetly suggested that we all go to my office to get my phone, and hit up Wendy's for a quick dinner instead of cooking Eggplant Parmesan and THEN having to start cookies late. Completed that task, then got down to the baking and then salsa-making! (Seriously. Why did I sign up to bring two things??)
Folks, recipes LIE. Any recipe that involves chopping peanuts, making caramel sauce in one pan on the stove while you're melting chocolate in a double boiler on another is not an easy recipe. If I were the scathing letter-writing type, the cookbook editor would be getting a doozy! They did come out nice, though. The bean salsa did too, despite the incident of me accidentally inhaling minced jalapeno and resorting to squirting milk up my nose to calm the burning. Go ahead and laugh, it worked and that's all I care about!)
Then last night, Hubby and I started our holiday baking. I had made sugar cookie dough the day before and it was resting in the fridge. After a dinner of Beefy Ravioli Casserole (which even I hated, and I hate very little) I started rolling out the dough, and using cookie cutters. Brian set up a Hot Wheels ramp for the kiddos, where they happily played while we cut out cookies, brushed them in milk and then sprinkled with colored sugar. Christmas music on Pandora, tree lit....iconic holiday activity. Everything was going swimmingly, and I expressed to my husband how well it was going and how much i was enjoying it.
Clearly I am an amateur. You don't say shit like that while doing stuff like that. Because as soon as we got the cookies half-baked, the power went out! I actually threw my hands in the air and said "You've got to be kidding me!" (disclaimer: that's probably cleaned up for this blog.) Luckily the batch came out OK and we gave the other ones on the counter a shot. They took a very long time to bake. The power came on about half an hour later, only to have me knock two boxes out of the cabinet, crushing several cookies. That was the last straw, it made me want to pull my hair out and stomp on it. But I didn't, I still have hair today.
The moral of this story: read your recipes beforehand, and always wear gloves when working with hot peppers. Oh, and never ask how anything could get worse. That's a death sentence on a cookie sheet. :)
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