I do more than mope about my writing and visit my mailbox. I knit, too. I’ve been taking every free moment to work on my Fleece Artist Lady of the Lake, which will be my first adult-sized sweater. I purchased the Ebony colorway, which is more purple than black. I don’t wear much purple, but the shades range from dark-almost-black to pale-sort-of-gray, and I think the jacket will be adorable with jeans or some of my work pants. I’ve got about 8" of the body left to knit, then the sleeves and collar. I plan to block the body before I knit the sleeves, and as I think about my schedule, I realize that I have to let go of my hope of wearing this to Rhinebeck. Maybe if I had another week, but I don’t think the whole festival is going to wait on my finishing this sweater!
This is my second year at Rhinebeck, and I don’t have much of a shopping list. I’d like to get a pretty darning egg, and I might look at hand cards, although I don’t think I’m much into processing fleece. I’m not sure about that, though. I’d like to get some new fibers to spin, but since my closet is burgeoning with fiber, I need to be restrained. I guess I’m going more for the social aspect than anything else, and who can blame me?
If you need to feel better about yourself for whatever reason, I"ve got a story to share. Last night, after my conversation with my dissertation chair, I felt relieved. For the first time in a while, I felt like my normal, optimistic self. I tend towards Pollyanna-ism, and I like that. I don’t like to be crabby and sad and doubtful.
Neal came home as I was chopping up potatoes and leeks for one of my favorite soups. I was feeling so good that I wanted to cook. I am not often a happy cook. In my first marriage, my ex did the cooking. He liked it, and he is an amazing cook. I was spoiled by rarely having to think about dinner. Just a little background so you understand that I truly was feeling better if I was happy to be in the kitchen.
I covered the veggies with water and turned the burner to high to get everything boiling the way you do for soup. Then I decided to catch up on my blog reading for the half an hour of simmer time that my soup required.
Did you catch that? Yup, the burner was on high, and the soup was meant to simmer. Neal was outside watering the plants he’d moved over the weekend, and I was blissfully reading away in the office at the other end of our little house.
I heard a sizzle, then I smelled something awful. I ran to the kitchen to discover my error in temperature.
Yes, people. I burned soup. I burned soup.
I admit that I have a few dishes that I make well, but that I’m overall a lame-ass cook, but this tops everything. The house still stinks, and the pot is still soaking in vinegar.
The worst of it? Neal said that he thought that the burner was on too high, but he didn’t want to say anything to me. During my funk he questioned something I was doing in the kitchen, and little brat that I am, I offered him the knife to do the chopping himself if he didn’t like they way I did it. He said he was scared to question me again.
I really wanted that soup. It was smelling pretty damn good until, you know, it burned.
Ohh, that sounds like something I would do. I discovered in high school (yes, high school — but if you asked my family about the incident they’d rhapsodize as if it were just the other day) that eggs are, in fact, a necessary part of made-from-scratch brownies.
Ah well — live and learn, right? (And then become a famous writer who can hire a housekeeper/chef/personal shopper?)
You had me at the post title! I had a bad flashback to the “revenge of the nerds”…
I do ALL the cooking. My husband is good at suggesting the restaurant if I’m too tired to cook. I have boiled a pot dry and set off the fire alarms before, and it is no fun. Now that I’m a little wiser from past experience, sometimes I’ll set the kitchen timer if I know I’m going to get distracted.
Four more days!
That is going to be a gorgeous jacket on you, my Bev!
At least, you cook. ;^)
Burned soup. Yeah, that can make a kitchen stinky. I’ve done the same thing.
Uhm… I’ve boiled water until it was just a few hopping drops in the pan.
Let’s just say that there was an “orange stir fry” incident and a “corn casserole” incident that I will never live down. DH? He managed to mess up a frozen waffle. Go ahead, beat that one. 🙂 At least soup requires more effort than a toaster oven making it harder. It happens to all of us. Especially when we want to eat something really. really. badly.
Oh forget about the soup, that’s what take-out is for. I’m just proud of you for knitting your first adult sweater! I need to try that sometime.
Don’t feel too badly. Some years ago I was BOILING WATER for tea, and got sidetracked just like you, and when I came back who-knows-how-long later to investigate the strange smell in my kitchen, I found that my teapot had FUSED to the cooking element. I had to throw them both away and replace the element. (And last month, after all this time, I finally got myself a new teapot.)
It happens to the most distracted of us!
I bought a heat diffuser last week and so far it has been totally worth it. I didn’t even scorch the tomato sauce the other night (a weekly occurrence since my burners are too hot for ‘simmering’ except for one which is buried behind my ‘super hot’ burner). Get thee to a kitchen store and get one! ;o)
Tonight I burned chocolate pudding, _while stirring it_. My mother sat next to a whistling teakettle until it boiled dry – she was reading. I thought that was amazing until I did the same thing. Now I have a rule:
I do not leave the kitchen while cooking anything, unless it is in the microwave, which turns itself off. All hail the inventor of the microwave.
After I pulled off a similar cooking stunt, DH called me at work the next day and asked “what are you going to char tonight?” I haven’t cooked since!