Kitchen failures #87

I had a doozy of a night in the kitchen on Tuesday with multiple kitchen failures.  I decided to be “on top of things” and throw together some ingredients to prep a casserole to cook after work today.  I had cooked chicken and some broccoli and kale that needed cooked, so I figured I’d make up a simple chicken, broccoli, and quinoa casserole.

I cut up the broccoli and started it in a steamer pot.  I grabbed the quinoa (in a plastic bag because it was purchased from the bulk bins) and started it on the stove with some water.  I shredded up the chicken and put it in a casserole dish, and then went to stir the quinoa.  It hadn’t been on the stove for long, but it felt like it was sticking to the bottom and sides.  I checked to make sure I didn’t have the heat too high (I didn’t), stirred it some more, and then realized that the water was really thick and gel-like.  Umm….that’s not quinoa. It took just a couple of seconds to realize that I’d just cooked flaxseeds instead of quinoa.

After laughing pretty hard about it and telling Lo, I grabbed the bag of black quinoa (also in a baggie from bulk bins) to use instead.  And then I had my doubts.  What if this wasn’t quinoa?  I forgot that I bought the flaxseeds…maybe these were chia seeds?!  I’d only written the bulk bin number on the tag for the bag, so I had no way of knowing for sure.  I buy red quinoa sometimes, but don’t remember buying black.  I googled pictures of chia seeds, ate some raw, and still couldn’t really tell.  I figured the only way to tell is by trying to cook some.  I was pretty convinced that they were chia, so I also put on a pan of white quinoa (from a labeled box), since I still needed it for the recipe.  Meanwhile, I overcooked the broccoli.  Thank goodness it was going in a casserole anyway. After cooking a couple about a tablespoon of black seeds for 10 minutes, I realized that they were in fact quinoa, so I put the rest of them in a container and LABELED it.

Also during this process, I went to cut Loren and I pieces of the leftover birthday cake that he made me on Sunday (oh yeah, I had a birthday).  It was a squarish shaped cake because after he was baking it in a 9×12 pan, I told him I wanted a double layer cake (we always do double layer – twice the frosting!), so he cut it in half and stacked it.  Anyway, I was looking at the cake trying to decide how to cut the rest of it when he walked through. I asked him if the remainder should be cut in 4 or 6 pieces – four seemed like they’d be too big.  He said 6 so I started making the cuts.  Not until I was finished the LAST cut, did I realize I did this. (note that our two pieces were already removed when I took the picture).

It’s been said many, many times that I shouldn’t be in charge of cutting things, but especially baked goods.  I have no perception of what are equal pieces, and am apparently still terrible at geometry.  And shapes, I guess.  Not only did I cut 9 pieces, they are ridiculously uneven.  And I was even trying to do it right!

In the end, I still got the casserole thrown together (though it took an extra 20+ minutes and lots of confusion) and was able to whip up a cheese sauce for it after work today while Jenson was eating dinner.  AND we have plenty of cake left since I cut it in more pieces.  AND I have a container of flaxseed gel (that I don’t really know what to do with, but hated to throw it out).

This night of kitchen failures was pretty mild compared to some others.  Like when Lo dropped a pizza in the bottom of the oven and it caught on fire.  He rushed to open the window and I rushed to turn off the fire alarm…before either of us addressed the pizza issue.  Or the time when I lived with a friend of mine and I had a mini wine bottle that I wanted to use as a bud vase.  It had a screw on cap which left a metal ring around the bottle neck that I wanted to pry off.  I grabbed a knife and starting prying and twisting the knife against the ring with the bottle leveraged against my stomach – it was really difficult so I was pushing pretty hard.  Of course when the ring snapped, the knife kept going and stabbed into my thumb that was holding the bottle.  I was so grateful that it caught my thumb, because otherwise I would have stabbed myself in the stomach.  And based on how hard it went against/into my thumb, there’s no doubt I would have been going to the hospital (my thumb probably could have used stitches anyway).  I still shudder when I think about how close that was.  Incidentally, THAT WEEKEND I was scheduled to take a knife skills class with my friend!  So I had to go to the knife skills class with my thumb all bandaged up from stabbing it with a knife.  So kitchen failures can always be worse…