I do 99% of the cooking in our home. Occasionally, Matt will make boxed mac and cheese, and he does make a KILLER grilled cheese sandwich, and once he browned ground beef for me\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but primarily I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the cook. And I think I do pretty well, no real complaints. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not perfect. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve burnt things like bread and bacon a couple times. When we were first married, I tried to make this roasted citrus chicken and forgot to account for the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153caramelization\u00e2\u20ac\u009d effect sugars in OJ would have. I ended up with a very \u00e2\u20ac\u0153caramelized\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but still edible, chicken. So far, I have avoided burning things beyond repair and setting things on fire\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. Until the other night\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n
I finally had an evening to myself, Matt was out with Dan, so I decided to cook which helps me relax. I wanted to try an idea I had. I make this fudge which I shamelessly stole from my Father-in-law, which he stole from his mother. Really, you see, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m carrying on a family tradition. Anyways, I like to play with flavors and have adapted the recipe for flavors like Mexican hot chocolate or chocolate peanut butter for example. Someone I know had made an orange cr\u00c3\u00a8me fudge, so I was thinking about fruitier flavors and I decided to try a berry flavor. I decided to try my idea with a half-batch just for fun\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Everything was going fine until the time came to add the extract. I was worried all the sugar would overwhelm the tartness of the berries so I was going to add just a dash of lemon extract. As I added in my 1\/4tsp, something happened and my hand must have jerked because as I poured it in the pot, the bottle splashed a little on the stove\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 From here on, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just give you my thought process:<\/p>\n
::splash::<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Darn! Wait, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t extract mostly alcohol??\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
::Whoosh:: as the burner flames up\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yep! Huh\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
::Whoosh:: as the entire pot of fudge ALSO catches fire<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Okay where is the lid? In the cabinet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 nope\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 nope.. there it is\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Try and put the lid on..<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it fit??? OH! The spoon is still there!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Remove the spoon\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There we go! Okay good\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Look over at my right hand holding the wooden spoon…<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, the spoon is on fire too!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And after sticking the spoon in the sink, it was over. The whole thing was about 10 seconds. I started laughing immediately, particularly at the image of me holding the flaming spoon, looking like the Statue of Liberty in the middle of my kitchen!<\/p>\n
All in all, I was very proud of myself. I was perfectly calm and almost scarily matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Now I know when I set something on fire, I at least know how to deal with it. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve reached the next level in cooking\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Oh and the fudge? It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t set right and the flavor was way off, but that might have been because it was flamb\u00c3\u00a9ed! \u00c2\u00a0Had it set better maybe I could have passed it off as fudge brulee? I did make the traditional chocolate one, without incident, to give to people at work, so the night was not a complete loss. And it has given me an idea for another flavor, toasted marshmallow. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I do 99% of the cooking in our home. Occasionally, Matt will make boxed mac and cheese, and he does make a KILLER grilled cheese sandwich, and once he browned ground beef for me\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but primarily I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the cook. And I think I do pretty well, no real complaints. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not perfect. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve burnt things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[918,22,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.onlytwopeople.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}