The Food N00bs

Flaming Breakfast Adventures

by Kal

Hi all -- long time no see. I could tell you what I've been up to since I posted last, but then I'd have to kill you.

I cook a lot less these days, thanks to a fortunate relationship situation where a devoted and excellent cook adores making me noms. For the last few months, I've accepted this gratefully and assured myself that this wasn't making me soft in my kitchen skills or anything -- I wasn't rusty, just disused, right? Right.

But alas, my wonderful in-home chef turned up sick, so today I volunteered to cook a simple breakfast for three: veggie sausage links, some toaster hash browns, four eggs over-easy, and a couple of slices of toast. You already know from the title of this post that something probably went horribly wrong in this plan, and oh yes, my friend, it went horribly, horribly wrong.

My toaster hash browns were fried to a beautiful golden brown, my veggie sausage was browning nicely, and my eggs were cooking a bit slow but not enough to concern me. I popped the bread into the toaster oven, then turned my back on it to deal with my reluctant eggs. Some minutes later, seeing the finish line of my meal preparation, I turned the vent fan off over the stove and promptly noticed smoke.

I turned around and realized the toast was smoking. Well, fuck, thought I. Something's burning in the crumb tray. I pulled open the door of the toaster oven to see whether I could salvage the toast.

I cannot emphasize enough what happened next.

The toast -- which was the source of the smoke, not crumbs in the tray -- greedily sucked in all that air from the open toaster oven door and FUCKING BURST INTO FLAMES.

Now, I have had a lot of kitchen misadventures in my life, and I watch a lot of Hell's Kitchen, but I have never, ever seen toast burst into flames, no matter how badly burnt. I shut the door and unplugged the toaster oven, thinking that just a moment without air would be enough to smother the fire. Sure enough, the flames died almost immediately. "Uhhh, there'll be no toast," I yelled toward the living room where my hungry breakfasters-to-be sat. I opened the toaster oven again to see how bad the situation was AND THE FUCKERS BURST INTO FLAMES AGAIN. This time, when I shut the door, they kept going. These were not little flames, either. These were flames that filled the six-slice-capacity toaster oven. Some of the flames were even freaking green.

"Uhhh, a little help?" I yelled.

My boyfriend ran in to help, and while I stood there thinking WHAT THE FUCK, FLAMING TOAST!, he threw baking soda on the fire and out it went.

We then laughed for at least half an hour about my toast flambee. If you have to set toast on fire, it's nice to do it for compassionate diners with a sense of humor. And I had no idea you could burn toast so badly it would become a small bonfire, so I learned something, too.

Until next time...watch those toasters!

Once a n00b, redux

By Sorcha

There I was in my kitchen, half-awake, fixin' to make myself some coffee. I poured the beans in the grinder, closed it, plugged it in and pushed the switch...

...and nothing happened.

"Bwa?" said I. I tried again. Nothing. Took the grinder to a different outlet - our house is wired in some bizarre Escheresque configuration that means two outlets on the same wall are likely to be on different circuit breakers. Still nothing. Just as I was berating myself for having bought the cheap grinder and trying to figure out where I was going to get the money for a new one, I looked again...

...and realized the damn lid wasn't latched.

Yeah. Just call me Brainchild.

In other news, if you missed the Cleveland ep of No Reservations, it sucks to be you. It was awesome. Ruhlman and Bourdain are terrific together, as always, and the episode is gritty, fun, and even heart-warming.

I read The Bobby Gold Stories last night. Great read; Tony manages to put in cool cooking stuff without it being obtrusive, and Nikki is fucking awesome - the closest most of us will probably ever get to meeting the legendary Grill Bitch. This one is going on my private shelf, though. While we're pretty liberal with what we let Littlest watch/read/listen to, I just don't think he's ready to find out that sometimes grownups like to put their tongues in places that are normally considered to be, ahem, off limits to tongues. (Kind of like the time we were watching "Family Guy" and the word "sodomy" came up. He asked, "What's sodomy?" After thinking about it a while, I said, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. It has to do with sex, and that's about all you're ready to hear.")

Parenting, Food N00b style. It's a never-ending odyssey of learning, laughter, and "What the everliving fuck?"

Once a n00b...

by Kal

Tonight, I baked a quick beer bread, and Sorcha came over just as it was coming out of the oven.  We happily scarfed piping-hot slices, and she asked for the recipe.  I began writing it down:

3 cups self-rising flour
3 tb. light brown sugar
1 beer (I used O'Doul's)

"Dude," Sorcha said.  "Why do you have O'Doul's in your house?"

"Because it was cheap," says I.

"Um," Sorcha said, "is that the beer you were complaining didn't get you drunk the other day?"

I swear, I did not know until Sorcha told me that O'Doul's is nonalcoholic beer.  How I managed to avoid this knowledge until today, I have no idea.

(P.S. the remainder of the recipe is as follows: mix the three ingredients together, pour into loaf pan, and bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour.  I've used Red Stripe, which is real beer, with good success.)

Food N00b on the loose at Borders

Kal: Faced with a little extra time between appointments today, I ducked into a Borders to browse their food literature.  I found the section in disarray, with a shelver and a floor manager conferring nearby on how best to organize the shelves.  Now, I used to work in bookstores, and I think I still have some kind of invisible sign that causes fellow book-slingers to recognize me as a suitable discussion partner.  "He's so mean to me!" the shelver said of her floor manager, clearly joking.  I joshed with the two of them for a while, and then the floor manager headed off to do whatever it is floor managers do.

I kept browsing, and at length the shelver said, "I think I have enough Barefoot Contessa and Rachael Ray."

I must confess, I got very excited at this.  Lo, someone who shared my opinions of the tendency to oversaturate the market with celebrity chefs!  "Man, I could not agree with you more," I said sincerely.

The shelver was strangely quiet.

I turned to see what had quieted her.  At the same time, she said, "There should be more cookbooks to your right."

She said this into her earpiece.

No, we had not been discussing the merits and demerits of fame and the celebrity-chef book mill.  She had simply been appraising her stockman that her shelves were adequately stocked with "Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over And Over Again" and "A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners."

Oh.

I spinelessly slunk off to the writer's reference section after that, although I didn't find anything that promised to keep authors from embarrassing themselves between the stacks...