I think I need to start writing a weekly article on this topic. This week we had adventure filled meals. We have our neighbor over for dinner every Monday because we have to give her two bean tacos a week in return for a really nice camp trailor, and we like her too. Kevin called to make sure she was coming 15 minutes before dinner should start and I realized I didn't have any tortillas. I have made them before and so I searched for the recipe book and never found it so I made it up. Now, most people know that I am not a gourmet cook but our food is always homemade. This being said, I don't know how to make-up recipes or spice things etc. I used a pita bread recipe and changed it A LOT so it would work as the tortilla recipe I remembered (or didn't remember) making 6 years ago. As I was making the tortillas Kevin remembered that fry bread is really great so we used the same dough to make fry bread. Now our neighbor is apparantly very adventurous and she was willing to try our creations of the night. She had never had fry bread and the tortillas definitely "didn't have enough salt" she mentioned. As I multitasked finding the deep fryer, preparing the fry bread and cooking my very interesting tortillas on the stove, Justin showed up with store bought tortillas and then I requested sour cream and immediately it was on my table.
Our neighbor tried the fry bread and decided the middle didn't taste good and so she rearranged her food to a store-bought tortilla and we successfully pulled off another night of 2 bean taco payments (with Justin and Rachel's help of course). And Justin and Rachel enjoyed our adventurous fry bread, interesting tortillas and store tortilla meal as well. I should mention that I did eat the interesting tortillas I cooked and they didn't taste too bad, but I am not a picky eater so what does that mean? Kevin really loved the fry bread.
My next adventure in the kitchen was pizza. I always make pizza-not gourmet but homemade. I am good at my recipe and we didn't have much time so I sent Kevin downstairs with the kids so I could make it quickly. Unfortunately I was going too fast and I turned to the wrong recipe. Thinking it wasn't quite the same but not having time to think, I started on it. Once I was more than half way down the recipe I knew something was wrong and I glanced to the last ingredient, which was flour. My regular recipe calls for 2 cups of flour and I normally double it to make 2 pizza's (one for Kevin, the other for us). This recipe called for 6 cups of flour and I doubled it so I needed 12 cups of flour. As I was laughing at the size of my bowl and how I was going to accomplish this quickly, I observed I had saved myself from making pizza dough for next time and the time after that, thanks to the freezer. Flour was puffing and my hands were covered in sticky globs of almost dough. I managed to see a lightbulb in my head to divide the mess and knead the dough separately. In the end my upper body hurts from kneading that much dough but dinner was served in good time.
Maybe these stories remind you of your kitchen.
(The picture is of Samantha when she was 2 years old in our kitchen in Pine Valley Townhomes)
