Cooking on the Fly

I decided to make some homemade pumpkin bread and hand it out to say "thanks" to the many people who have been so helpful to us our first week or so here. Before I even started baking I had to put the eggs I was going to use through some rigorous testing. First, I had to wash them off really well and do the visual test to make sure there weren’t any “extras” on the shell, like chicken poop droppings or tiny feathers. Then I had to put them all through the sink test. I put them all in a bucket of water to see if they sink or float. If they sink, they are still good. If they float, they have gone bad- probably sat out at the grocery store at room temperature for too long! So, 1 out of my 6 eggs was a floater and I had to throw it away. So sad. I was ready to start mixing all my dry ingredients, so I measured out the sugar, baking soda, baking powder and flour and dumped it into a bowl. I started to measure out the spices to go in the mix and I realized that I did not have any teaspoon measuring spoons, only tablespoon. No problem, I’ll just wing it! But then as I looked a little closer I realized that I didn’t have tablespoon measuring spoons either, they are metric measuring spoons! I called Will on the phone at work to help me out and he tried to give me some conversion lessons. Ended up being way too much math for me, so I scrapped the project- didn’t want to waste my precious canned pumpkin- I only brought 6 cans over here! So I began cleaning up. I had to toss out all the ingredients I had already measured out because they are all white and there was no way to separate them and save them at this point. As I tossed the measuring cups in the sink to be washed I realized that they weren’t right either- they are also metric! Oh my! Before I do anymore baking I either need to go back and get a major in math, move to England, or just patiently wait for the package my dear friend Liz is sending me with real measuring tools to come in the mail! (wonder how long that will take to get here...) After I discovered that baking was not going to be easy, I decided to try my first “new recipe” for dinner, and what that helped me discover is that this house has no smoke alarms! I was SO excited about making dinner tonight! I bought a fresh, locally grown mango at the grocery store and I couldn’t wait to use it! I also had a green pepper and some thawing chicken in the refrigerator, but I don’t have any recipes with mangos in my recipe collection. So, I got onto Allrecipes.com and found the perfect recipe which uses all three ingredients, called “Chicken and Pasta in a Mango Cream Sauce.” I printed out the recipe and then I Google-ed “how to cut a mango” as suggested by some of the reviewers on the website, since it can be kind of tricky. I took careful notes on how to do it and I was all ready to go. When Will got home from work I started chopping everything up and then I heated the olive oil in the skillet, as it says to do on the second line of the recipe. While it was heating up I finished prepping the rest of the ingredients and then the next thing you know I was yelling, “Will! I need help!” because the kitchen was filled with smoke! It was so thick it was hard to see and it smelled really bad. (I guess I’m not quite used to the gas cooking and the cheap pots and pans they supplied us!) We had to open up all the windows in the kitchen and open up the garage door and the door between the kitchen and the garage to get some air flowing in there. When we finally got the air quality back to normal I put the scorched pot in the sink and decided to start over. Just as I was starting to heat up the oil again I realized that the kids’ fish stick dinner was burning in the oven (the dials on the ovens do not have any numbers- they got washed off- so I just have to guesstimate what temperature I'm using!)! Long story short, I saved the fish sticks and our dinner was not ready until after the kids went to bed, but it was well worth all the hassle and the wait- it was delicious!!