Julie and Julia...and Julie

I'm having a great morning. I got up, the sun was shinning... I got to work and my coworkers are happy...Its going to be a great day tomorrow and I get to go to the Beach! I'm doing my daily www.people.com pilgrimage when I see a picture of Amy Adams (whom I adore) on the set of "Julie and Julia"... I'm intrigued.

I discuss it with my Project Manager and she informs me "Oh yeah... I just read that!"... I saw "Can I borrow it?? I had no idea it was a book"... "Let me try to find it amongst the shoes!"...

So I begin my quest on www.amazon.com. This is a story about a lady who decided to make every recipe from The Art of French Cooking in a year. The math dictates about 1.25-1.5 recipes a day! Hilarity ensues.

So I begin thinking about my own disastrous cooking attempts and find myself laughing out loud at my desk! I have been and always will be a baker and cook. I'm not a chef, because that requires professional training (and to some extent talent) or a domestic goddess...but I do have my fair share of kitchen mishaps which I have decided to share:

1. The time when I saw a food network program chef make a banana cream pie of some kind... I couldn't get my custard to thicken! *Custard, in general is a horrible thing for me to try to make, honestly, I've curdled more milk than I care to think about.
2. My more recent banana creme cheesecake, in which again my pudding (custard, what's the difference?) would not thicken.
3. My disastrous caramel making experience, in the middle of which I managed to sneeze so violently that a rib popped out of place in my back, where I spent about 30 minutes agonizing over what constituted a "dark amber color" as I did not have a candy thermometer. *Thank you Steven for putting one in my stocking this year!
4. One of my first attempts at making a cake and frosting, in which I spaced the difference between regular and confectioners sugar. The frosting was nice and gritty...but still somewhat tasteful.
5. The peanut butter cookies that my Dad asked me to make that came out horribly flat and unappetizing. Sorry Dad, my heart just wasn't in it that day. *I'm happy to make you some to make up for it though, I was only 15!
6. The chocolate cake I made from scratch when I realized that I didn't have enough cocoa powder to finish it off... So I added chocolate chips instead. *Side note: If you are going to do this... melt them first! The chips all sunk to the bottom of the pan, which was greased and floured, but no match for partially melted chocolate chips sticking to it! My inverted cake came out in chunks, which were then held together by MOUNDS of butter cream icing. It was the leaning tower of chocolate cake. *I have since bought parchment paper for lining my pans!
7. The chicken that I tried to cook like Giada from Food Network... My lesson learned is that just because there is wine in the fridge, that does not mean you need to cook with it and I should ALWAYS cook the first time with a recipe. *Only after making things dozens of times do I feel like I can stray from the normal tried-and-true.
8. My pumpkin rolls which I tried to roll out on my granite tile counter tops, sans pastry mat! T-O-T-A-L Disaster! Sticky, sticky, sticky dough...meet tile grout...I also remember a particular moment when I'm standing over my dough with both hands covered and needing more flour...unable to open the canister without covering my entire kitchen in dough, when Steven walks in the door. I'd never been more happy to see him. *Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here.
9. Anytime I've tried to melt chocolate over a sauce pan of boiling water, huge clumpy mess! *I've since discovered the microwave...works wonders...but also, throwing a bit of butter in the clumpy mess will smooth it right out too. Thank you Alton Brown!
10. Any time I've thought the chicken was done...but it wasn't. *This is what meat thermometers were made for! And also, this is why I don't use the BBQ.

By now you're probably wondering why anyone would even let me in a kitchen. I'm generally fearless about trying new recipes... even custard (despite my experiences). But once in a while you mess up...and sometimes you learn from it and sometimes you don't (see custard!). But I love to cook and I love to bake and I love to eat!! This is why I watch food network constantly, I'm trying to sharpen my skills. And usually, the end result is pretty tasty, if not, we have a good laugh and open a can of soup.