Thursday, March 9, 2000

9 March 2000

I'm right at the end of a project at work, and it's been consuming so much of my mental energy that yesterday, driving home, I was trying to think about what I'd write about this morning and not having any luck. I mean, it's one thing to talk briefly about interesting projects, or to complain about people that drive you nuts, but I'm pretty sure even my most fanatic reader doesn't want to hear about how I spent nine hours today tracing through something like two thousand lines of code line by line, looking for the stupid pointer error that was making the whole thing blow up in unpredictable spots.

So that's all I'll say about it. But I was despairing of having a halfway decent journal entry: "Work hell. Tree budding. Flowers growing." Like that.

But then T made dinner for us.

I'd like to state in his defense that T isn't a very experienced cook, and that Matt and I were hovering around the kitchen while he worked distracting him rather a lot. And if it had been only one or two minor blunders, I probably would've just shrugged and moved on.

But the first mistake or so got him flustered, which contributed to more mistakes, which got him even more flustered, which...

Let me start at the beginning.

T had told me that he was planning on making beef stew, which I know from experience is best if allowed to simmer for several hours, but can be rushed for a reasonable meal in about an hour. T lives just about an hour away from us, so I was figuring he wouldn't get to our house until about seven, which meant dinner would be ready around, oh, 8:30-ish. A bit later than we're used to, but not horribly so.

T called around 6:45 to say he was on his way, and didn't get to our place until 7:30. (This is actually pretty amazing, considering the usual state of traffic on the main roads between us.)

Matt and I helped T bring in his bags of groceries and unpack them. T had assured me that he needed nothing more than a large pot and a spoon from my kitchen, so I got those out for him as well. Assuming he knew more or less what he was doing and would need only guidance around an unfamiliar kitchen, I sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar to watch.

It swiftly became obvious that T didn't know very much about onions. He'd brought two gorgeously huge onions - each one the size of both my fists put together - but one of them was sprouting, and he was struggling to get the skin off. I, being the onion freak that I am, started twitching and finally offered to chop the onions for him. He relinquished the cutting board and knife with something like relief, and I started chopping, stripping out the center which had gone mealy as the onion sprouted. The second onion was rotten, but since it had rotted from the inside, this wasn't T's fault - those are pretty hard to spot. I replace it with a couple from my own stash, and soon had a bowl full of stew-sized onion bits.

In the meantime, T had asked Matt if we could spare some butter. His recipe called for two tablespoons, and since he was halving it, he only needed one. Matt pulled out a partial stick of butter, left over from my spate of holiday baking, and put it on the counter. When next he looked around, T was melting the whole six tablespoons of the stick in a second pot. (T had mentioned the marks on sticks, so he knew they were there - I guess he just assumed that what Matt put in front of him, since it had already been cut, was the amount he'd asked for.) While Matt showed T the marking on the wrapper that corresponded to one tablespoon, I got the butter dish and scooped out the unmelted bit, leaving him with perhaps four tablespoons. But since the butter's purpose was for sauteeing the onions, the extra wasn't going to hurt anything.

T dumped the onion pieces into the pot with the butter, nearly completely filling the pot. (There were a lot of onion pieces.) Following his recipe, he then added the mushrooms, though since each mushroom slice was almost as long as my hand and half as wide, they could have stood a little chopping first, too. This caused the amount of food in the pot to heap over the edge of the pot rather significantly, and after some thought, T decided to transfer the meat - which was done browning anyway - to a strainer, and put the onions and mushrooms in the big pot. I applauded the decision and fetched out the strainer.

Safely once again underway, I sat back down on my stool. Matt asked T if he could help, and T consulted his cookbook and asked Matt to measure out a cup and a half of broth and add to it a cup and a half of flour. It's probably indicative of how drained I've been from work that this didn't set off any warning bells. After Matt had combined the two and complained about the flour being lumpy, I fished out a wisk to help him, and then curiously leaned over to glance at T's recipe, mostly because I was getting hungry and was hoping it would be done soon.

Just as Matt was pouring the broth/flour mix over the beef, I saw it: 3 Tablespoons flour I put my finger down on the book. "T..." He looked down. "Three cups of burgundy wine," he read.

"No, above that," I corrected.

He looked at the book. He looked at the pot of paste-covered meat. He looked at the book. Horror began to spread over his face.

This was the point at which I more or less rudely shoved him out of the way and took over. I did this for several reasons. I've been cooking since I was about eight, and while I don't usually enjoy it, when I put my mind to it I'm very good at it. T had made a series of mistakes that any beginner could make (and probably every beginner has) but it needed a more experienced cook to recover the meal. I started adding water to the thickening paste and told T and Matt to open the bottle of cooking wine.

They struggled with the corkscrew for several minutes before Matt decided to take the plastic wrapping off... and the plastic screw-cap popped off in his hand. We dumped everything into the large pot with the onions and mushrooms and added about half the bottle of wine. When I'd added enough water that it looked like the flour would stop baking itself to the bottom of the pan, I dragged everyone out of the kitchen and we chatted while the mess simmered.

Half an hour later, we were back in the kitchen. I gingerly tasted the broth. It tasted like beef-and-onion flavored paste. So I had Matt fish out the beef and as much of the vegetables as he could, and dumped them into a bowl. With most of the pasty broth gone, the beef and vegetables were actually pretty reasonable.

But this morning, the downstairs still smells vaguely like burnt flour.


Just so T won't think I'm picking on him exclusively, I've made some pretty spectacular blunders myself.

My very first experience with cooking was when I was five or six - my first grade class got together as a group and made cupcakes. There were three teams: one made the cupcakes, one made and spread the icing, and the third decorated the lot with sprinkles. I was on the team making the cupcakes, and since I was the best reader in the class, it was my job to read the directions off the box to the others.

I got my first hint that something had gone wrong when the cupcakes were still mostly liquid at the end of the baking time. They firmed up after another five or ten minutes, but by then I'd consulted the box and knew what had gone wrong: The directions called for three egg whites. I'd told them to put in three eggs.

Everyone agreed that the cupcakes looked lovely, that the icing was very tasty, and that the cupcakes themselves were disgusting. I can remember sitting in my chair, miserable, wiping the icing off my cupcake with my finger and eating it (like the rest of the class) and being sure that they were all staring at me - that they all hated me for messing up their cupcakes.

It was a valuable lesson in reading the directions.

Only a year or so ago, I decided to make a pair of peanut butter pies. This is one of my favorite recipes, and I'd made it several times before. Part of it involves whipped cream, and I think the pie is best if I buy real cream and whip it myself. On this occasion, I stood over the cream with the mixer for at least twenty minutes before I checked the box and realized I'd bought half-and-half instead of whipping cream.

It was a valuable lesson in checking ingredients.

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