Day 104...Kitchen Catastrophe

It was a short day at work today. We had a CPR and First Aid training, and were out of there by noon. As soon as I could, I set to work on baking some Thanksgiving goodies. This year, I am in charge of making my family's traditional dessert, pretzel jello salad. It may sound gross but it's amazing! I am also in charge of making my famous spinach dip. In addition to that, I also wanted to make a tofu pumpkin pie for my husband and I tonight. You see; we started a new tradition where, the day before Thanksgiving, my husband and I eat chow mein, pumpkin pie straight from the tin and only with spoons, all while watching the Ninja Turtle movies. Crazy right? It was how we spent our first Thanksgiving time together up at the college. Since we didn't have any dishes except for a couple of spoons, we had to eat the pie straight from the tin. And as for the chow mein, the college commons was closed for the holiday so we went to the nearest grocery store and bought chow mein for dinner. To explain the Ninja Turtle movies....well...we're big kids. Thus the crazy tradition started.

Anyway, back to cooking...things didn't go exactly as I had envisioned them. To start, I burnt the crusts for the pretzel jello salad, setting off the smoke alarms all through the house. I followed the recipe exactly so I have no idea what happened there! So I turned down the oven temp and tried again. Luckily I had bought more than enough supplies!

Next...the tofu pumpkin pie. The recipe said to blend the tofu and pumpkin puree in the blender, so I did. But the mixture was a bit thick and not blending so well. So I opened the top and tried to poke it with a big spoon to help get the suction going. Well....it worked alright. It worked so well it sucked the spoon right into the blender! My big wooden spoon....in the blender....I stood there for a brief moment frantically mashing the buttons, watching as the spoon danced in the blender before I found the off button. For the next half hour I sifted my hands through the blended goop, extracting any chunk of wood I could find. Call me crazy but I still cooked it. Let's just hope my pumpkin pie doesn't turn into pumpkin surprise...eat at your own risk.

And lastly, my spinach dip turned out more potent then planned, thanks to a couple of garlic cloves that were a little stronger than expected. My only hope is that the crackers we'll be dipping with will help to kill some of the sting.

So there you go, three kitchen catastrophes that, luckily, gave me more of a laugh than anything else. Thank God for good music that helped keep my spirit high.

Pickle's wooden pumpkin pie...let's not make that a new tradition. :-p