Culinary Execution

My cooking game has been in the shitter lately.

            I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me. 

A few weeks ago, I was trying to make thai red curry with the beef stew meat that Nicole gave me last time I worked.  I browned the meat, chopped all the veggies, mixed in the sauce ingredients, and set the slow cooker to cook on Low for 8 hours.  That was at 9 o’clock at night.  I woke up in the middle of the night and set the slow cooker to “Keep Warm.” 

Or so I thought.

I accidentally set it on High.

By the time I woke up, I had myself a well-done beef stew. 

The carrots soaked up all the curry flavor. 

Look here, I like a couple carrots grated into my curry.  But Green B.E.A.N. Delivery doesn’t let you buy just two carrots, so I bought a pound.  (I signed back up in January, because they were running a special where you got 20% off your first 3 orders.)  And then I had a brilliant idea:  I wasn’t going to use rice with this curry, so if I grated all the carrots into it, they would give it the texture of rice! 

Well that stroke of genius certainly backfired.

Luckily Frank liked it, so I gave it all to him and just roasted some frozen chicken thighs to use as my lunches for the week.

*                      *                      *

I love cooking with protein powder.

It makes everything better:  pancakes, brownies, coffee. . . . when I’m traveling and can’t get a good breakfast, protein powder is always there for me. 

So I had this recipe for lemon chia protein muffins that I wanted to try.  It calls for vanilla protein powder, but all my vanilla powder was at work, because that’s where my gym is, and I was sick of chocolate.  Not to worry, we have Ziplock bags at work!  I threw a few scoops into one, tossed it in my backpack, and was good to go. 

I stopped by my parents’ house before going home, and pulled the bag out.

“Hey Mom, look at this.  It looks like I have a bag of cocaine!” I laughed, shaking it at her.

She rolled her eyes at me and replied, “Oh I can’t wait to hear you explain that to a cop if you get pulled over.”  Never doubt.  This woman is my mother.

The smell is so strong that no one would ever mistake it for actual cocaine.  However, as I continued shaking the bag, I noticed that the bag wasn’t closed all the way.  Then I noticed that I had a light dusting of white powder all inside my backpack. 

I’m so pretty.

Well anyways, I made the muffins, and they were fucking delicious. 

They just . . . didn’t hold their shape so well. 

I think it was because I used too much apple sauce.  It called for half a cup, and I had a little more than half a cup left in the jar, so I just dumped it all in the mix. 

I liked them so much I wanted to try them again—this time with less apple sauce, and more baking soda.  This time I was also sure to completely seal my Ziplock bag of definitely-not-cocaine before taking it home.

Same fucking thing. 

I threw the recipe away.

*                      *                      *

Frank and I finally had a Saturday where we didn’t have anything to do.  We’ve been going out to eat too much, so I told him I want to try cooking more on the weekends—particularly breakfast. 

Lately Frank has started learning how to ride a motorcycle, so we got up early(ish) to go ride around the park for a little bit and practice stops and turns.  Honestly I needed a day (or two) to work on my skills as well before we get into the heart of riding season.  And my gear shifter is starting to stick when I shift up; I should probably take a look at that.

After riding for about an hour, we went back to his place, ran to the store, and I started assembling this banana French toast concoction.  Once assembled . . . “cover and refrigerate for at least one hour or up to one day.”

Well crap.

Should’ve started this before we went riding. 

We went Mother’s Day shopping to kill time. 

This actually turned out okay.  The recipe said it serves six, ha.  We quartered that shit so we could have the rest for Sunday breakfast. 

Since we didn’t have anything to do for the rest of the day, I thought I’d cook dinner as well.  Frank has to be at a gig by 6 (he has a side job where he gets paid to dance with other peoples’ wives . . . yeah, I’m dating Patrick Swayze); I can totally have dinner ready by then. 

I decided it was finally time to cook that rooster that I murdered. 

I think I chose a good recipe for him:

 http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/skillet-chicken-roasted-carrots/?user_id=208391338094317&alt_source=mfp&alt_medium=email&alt_campaign=recipes20160425&1utm_source=mfp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=recipes20160425&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURKallXVTVNR0poTm1VeiIsInQiOiI4SmlyZlpsWGVnd0hxbkVYVUtsNWdlQXNNTExZTVVcLzYySmJ3Y2MyUXNLUWxyK1RXSlBJd2hGaktTQW9uQ0N5WE9zR3VVMTVcL2NObFFpXC9KeG1CYnF3bWVkeTRSZUxPYlhKYWp6YVBvQ3lhbz0ifQ%3D%3D 

Frank took him out of the freezer last night to let him thaw. 

I run my bike home (now my shifter is sticking when I shift down; fuck there is definitely something wrong here but I don’t have time to deal with it), grab ingredients for this other recipe, and drive back to Frank’s. 

It is now 4 o’clock.

Um . . . this should be ready in an hour, right?  It’s fine.  Everything’s fine.

Frank recently discovered that roasted carrots are the shit, so I bought extra for this recipe (plus I won’t be using the potatoes that it calls for).  And even though it calls for chicken breast, I figure I can cook all the chicken parts and just remove the different cuts as they finish.  It’ll be fine.

While Frank skins the carrots, I brown the chicken parts.

“Um.  Babe. . . ?  Why does this chicken have so many legs?”

“Oops!  Guess I thawed out the wrong bag.”  He opens the freezer door and pulls out another bag, “But this one’s just breasts.”

“Well, we have leg quarters, wings, and tenders, so breasts are all that’s left to make a whole chicken, hun.”

He shrugs.  “So . . . should I start thawing this now?”

“No, they’ll never be thawed in time.  Which legs are mine do you think?”

“Mmm those.”  He points to the skinny dark ones.  “You skinned yours, remember?”

“Oh yeah.  What’re the other ones from then?”

“That was one of the fat-ass broilers that Chicken Mama let live way too long and I had to go kill a bunch of them.” 

Okay, so I’m basically just cooking chicken leg quarters, which take kind of a long time to cook, but the tenders and wings will be done in time for Frank to eat.  That’s fine. 

            He puts on his best Gatsby outfit and the fedora I brought him back from my Austin trip, and manages to scarf a few bites down before he has to go.  It’s another 45 minutes before the leg quarters are done cooking.  I make sure to plate up a leg from “my” chicken, snap a Glamour Shot, and settle in.

            I text Frank my assessment:  “Well that rooster was a tough lil bugger in life . . . and death.”

            Lucky for me, the Gatsby gig fed Frank a lot better than I did.

         

            When I told Sam about what I’d done, he said, “You know the French have a famous recipe for old rooster. . . ?”

            Is he talking about coq au vin or making a dick joke?  I feel like it’s the latter, but I tell him that the rooster I killed was only 11 weeks old, so he was young and skinny and muscular. 

            Turns out that Sam wasn’t making a dick joke, he was poking fun at me for not thinking of coq au vin; which I did think about, and decided not to do because . . . well because I’m pretty. 

            Well, I still have the breasts.  Maybe I can at least cook them right. 

            Frank said he liked it, and ate all the leftovers. 

            I baked some chicken thighs to eat for lunch all week.