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July 15, 2010 Quickie post + a giveaway!! Funnnn!!
After Tuesday’s breakfast bowl, that was all I could think of when I woke up.
- 1 amazing nectarine
- 1 banana
- Nancy’s organic plain yogurt
- Cascadian Organic high fiber morning cereal
- 1/2 Ezekiel sprouted english muffin + pnut butter
Whoa.
I loved the variety. If you know me, when it comes to food, I like variety. I am ALWAYS trying to split with Chris when we go out to eat. He’s not a fan though. He says, he has his mind set on a certain thing and just wants that. Borrrriiiing ;) However, when I’m with my mom, she is always up for it!
It’s like my own mini-buffet!
I was cleaning the kitchen in preparation for a BIG day of baking.
And then I did this….
Cracked.
Totally salvageable! I do not recommend juggling watermelons + cantaloupes at the same time.
Lunch repeat from yesterday too, with a few changes!
I used a tortilla this time, which go sooo deliciously crispy but for this particular sandwich, bread is better.
- tortilla
- cheese
- tempeh
- cheese
- tortilla
After it cooked I added: cucumbers + pickles + avocado
carrots, cuc’s + curry honey hummus on the side
And then I got my bake on. Recipes + a TON of photos coming soon. There were too many to go through tonight. I was busy all day [working on headers + a few other projects] and didn’t get home until about 11pm.
These babies are vegan…and delicious!
A non-vegan version.
A bread version. mmmm
We enjoyed a fun dinner with Ann + Kurtz tonight.
We both had piles of veggies that we wanted to use up with a little bread + shrimp on the side. Simple summer grilled dinners are the best!
Gobble.
When I recently returned back to Colorado, from visiting my family in Ohio, I had an awesome package from Lundberg waiting for me. I absolutely LOVE Lundberg’s products. The quality is awesome, everything always tastes great and they are Monsanto FREE!! I use so many of their products. Most frequently I use their rice + brown rice syrup.
They rock.
I don’t usually go for the boxed grain mixes with seasoning packets because I enjoy adding my own seasonings and buying the grains in bulk. However, it was nice to not have to think about what to add and just throw it in the pot. The ingredient list was much better than the norm and the product was delicious. Both Chris + I loved all of these couscous mixes.
I think the curry was my favorite but I also really liked the savory herb. I have been so obsessed with quinoa + millet that I have forgotten about couscous. SO tasty!
Lundberg was generous enough to offer a giveaway and send one lucky commenter 4 boxes, as I show above. I’m excited to promote their product, even though I have no gain from it. I love to spread the word about such quality companies.
This giveaway ends at 5pm on Friday. There is one way to enter [whatever, I’m old school like that].
Leave a comment below telling me about your biggest kitchen flop ever. Did you ever completely ruin a meal when you had friends over? Drop something coming out of the oven?? Dish your best story!
I think one of my winners [there are a few!] was taking out this layered pudding/whipped cream/walnut crust dessert called Cream Delight out of my parent’s fridge in Ohio. It was a big 9x13 pan and I don’t know WHAT happened but the whole thing ended up on the floor. Quite ridiculous. However, you know I sat on the floor eating it with a spoon. :)
Happy Thursday!!
Night!
Ashley
Reader Comments (167)
My biggest flop? Hmm..there have been so many as I learned to cook on my own after I got married. I was raised with a family that ate fast food every night. In our fridge, where most people have fruits and veggies, we had Taco Bell hot sauce...mounds of it. My biggest flop would have to be the entire first year of marriage. I didn't know anything about spices or the "right" way to use them..I thought I could be creative and just add whatever to a box of mac and cheese and it would be "gourmet". Boy have I learned a LOT in the last 12 years of marriage. My husband can now enjoy a meal without the look of doom on his face!! Poor guy suffered a lot that first year!
I never ever EVER get a recipe right on the first go. No matter how hard I try or how closely I follow the directions SOMETHING always goes so terribly wrong. "Ohhh so it was one cup of chopped onions and not garlic. Got it! I'll know better next time!" <~~ totally happened!
Oohh love the breakfast!
My personal biggest flops would be things like not putting the lid on the blender and having stuff go EVERYWHERE! But my mum's one is good - all the family coming over, she spends the day making a HUGE lasagne, gets it out of the oven as they walk down the path - and the dish cracks and it goes all over the floor :P
I'm quite inexperienced when it comes to cooking, so I really have done it all. Way, way, way uncooked pasta, soupy rice, undercooked meat, and, well, I think you can sense a pattern here!
I'm about to start my 4th year of college, and after two years of shockingly unhealthy dorm food, I started branching out into cooking for myself last year. I read cookbooks, bookmarked a ton of food blogs, brushed up on basic cooking skills, and after a few months, I was feeling confident enough to host a dinner party for a few close friends. Though the evening started off well with homemade hummus and crackers, things got progressively worse. With it being the first dinner party I was hosting on my own, I failed to time things correctly. The spaghetti carbonara got cold while I waited for the baguette slices to get toasted for bruschetta, and the tiramisu I made didn't get enough resting time in the refrigerator, resulting in a droopy dessert.
Your food looks really good today and so, so healthy! I have had too many flops in the kitchen to possibly recall them all and in the past it has put me off cooking. Now I see failures as a learning experience and knowledge of what doesn't work! Hopefully, over time I will discover what does work!
I was baking a cake for my friends bridal shower. I'm not sure what happened, but I started to apply the icing the cake just started to split in half!!! One cake later, and an extra batch of icing made -- a new cake was made! I was freaking out though since I had to stay up extra late :P
I tried to make "healthy" fruit bars one time.... they turned out dry and thick.... not enough flavor and no moistness at all. We called them the "not horribly repugnant bars." They were edible but definitely not a success! Needless to say, most of them were not eaten by my family (3 boys and a husband). I'll keep trying! Thanks for the giveaway!
Red velvet cake! It's happened multiple times when I needed it to come out perfectly!
For Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, I was in charge of the traditional sweet potatos with marshmallows. I left it under the broiler to crisp up...and forgot about them...until it started on fire. Oops!
I am always trying to get Toly to share when we go out too, but he is never into what I want to order. I do have a best friend who is on the complete same food wavelength as me, and we ALWAYS split two different meals. It's honestly the best of both worlds.
I dropped watermelon today too! Only mine was already cut and I dropped the bowl all over the floor. I'm still feeling sticky stops! :(
I love their products too. They make such wonderful rice. Hmmm, biggest kitchen oops was when I caught the oven on fire while trying to make carmel corn. Yeah, throw the overpowering smell of burnt popcorn in that mix and you have one major mess!
So many flops, but one of the biggest was when i tried to make west african peanut stew with chicken for my sister and my then-new boyfriend (now husband) and noticed too late that the chicken had gone off. So we had steamed rice with a very very liquid peanut sauce and a couple of pieces of green beans and carrots. He is from West Africa and he was not impressed, but was so polite and ate all of his plate. I have seriously improved since then, thank god !
I happen to add too much salt to everywhere and then try to fix it up every time :D
My most recent kitchen flop was when I completely botched making macaroni and cheese (the real stuff, not the boxed dinner). I don't know if that's the biggest, but I was furious at how I screwed up such a simple dish and I pitched a gigantic fit.
On my first Easter cooking a big dinner for friends, I dropped an entire pot of macaroni on the floor. My first guest arrived to me sitting in the floor with my cat, surrounded by macaroni, crying. It was very ridiculous!
I made chocolate chip cookies for my son's 1st birthday party and I don't know what I did, but they were HORRIBLE. I had to of left something out of the batter because even the kids wouldn't eat them. It doesn't sound so bad right now, but at the time it was pretty devastating. It took me abouti 6 years before I attempted cookies again!
I have mistaken salt for sugar in a batch of cookies once - I was in a huge rush and needless to say had to make a pit stop at a grocery store for some premade chocolate ship - ugh.
Awesome giveaway!
I can be such a disaster in the kitchen with my accident prone ways! I've knocked over countless cutting boards and bowls of chopped veggies during kitchen prep time. I think the most recent "kitchen disaster" I had was my first attempt to poach eggs. It was a serious fail, but luckily, I didn't have to worry about letting anyone else down because I was just making them for myself. Phew
Oh, Kitchen flops. I have had many, being in culinary school! But I think catching an entire pan on fire may be the winner. ;)
xo
Kris
Ashely,
I dropped a huge tray of baked ziti on the floor at my daughter's communion party-no baked ziti for that party! I would love to try the grain mixes.
Where do I start... :)
Thought I´d do myself a favor and melted butter in the microwave - about to make cubcakes. Yes - I did! Then try creaming/fluffying sugar and warm butter! Yes how about 40 minutes of - "yes looks like it´s getting there" NO! Called mum and she laughed so hard and told me to put the whole thing in the fridge for 10 minutes and start from there. Which worked ofcourse! :)
I was making a pan of roasted potatoes once and while I was seasoning them, the salt grinder broke and the entire container (it was brand new, hence full) ended up on the potatoes : o)
The most disappointing thing that recently happened to me in the kitchen was dropping an entire pint of blueberries all over the (not clean) kitchen floor. I didn't have enough time to pick them up individually to wash them, so I had to (carefully) sweep them and just throw them out. So sad...
one time i was making a quick microwave breakfast cause i had to run out the door for school and i was making an easy poached egg in the microwave (delicious and fake fancy) when for no reason at all it just exploded. needless to say that was quite a clean up...
hmm, i will always remember the muffins i made with fresh cherries and waaaay too much baking soda/powder (i can't remember which one). they tasted aweful, but i didn't want to waste the cherries so i picked them all out :)
I only really started cooking in the past 2 years or so and as I was trying to think of my biggest disaster from this time (probably a cake for a 4th of July picnic whose layers all crumbled as i took them out of the pan...made for a delicious pile of crumbs though...) I remembered a disaster that far surpasses them all from when I was in 6th grade. My friend and I were making no-bake cocoa cookies and one of the ingredients was 1/2 cup coffee. Not knowing any better, we thought it meant coffee GROUNDS, not a cup of the brewed stuff. Those things did NOT TASTE GOOD.
I havnt ever had a real big floor flop, but I remember one time when I was youger my mom caught out kitchen floor on fire, I forget exactly how it caught on fire but still, not pretty
Those muffins look SO yum :)
Biggest kitchen flop... not actually in the kitchen, but in HS I was carrying a pot of chicken soup to a smaller refrigerator in my living room (we had a bar built in and it a was a good fridge for storage). Well, I tripped.... chicken soup EVERYWHERE!!! We had to get the carpets professional cleaned and were STILL finding chicken shreds for months.
My biggest flop.... I had just started dating my now husband. I wanted to make a great meal for him and he loves crab. I found a great crab cake recipe online. I think I forgot one of the main ingreidiants because I pull them out of the oven to flip them over and they collapse to the bottom of the oven. To top it off I start to cry, he starts to laugh and the crab cakes catch a fire on the hot oven. I still have never attempted crab cakes but at least he still lets me cook!
I had made an incredible-looking fruit tart with an almond shortbread crust, vanilla pastry cream, and concentric circles of fresh summer berries and peaches. I made an apricot glaze on the stove to finish off the tart but accidently left the burner on. Right before serving, I set the completed tart on the stove and went to grab some plates when an explosion happened.... I had set the glass tart pan on the hot burner. Shards of glass went flying across the kitchen along with chunks of tart. It was definately not funny at the time, but in retrospext I have to laugh.
Biggest kitchen flop...oh man, too manyt to list. Most recently, making homemade basil ice cream and turning the heat up because I was too impatient to wait for it to thicken over low. And the eggs TOTALLY curdled. It was seriously disgusting looking. But I put it in the ice cream maker anyway and it came out alright. Maybe a little chewier than it was supposed to. :)
Oh I've had quite a few flops too. I've flipped fish onto the floor from the stovetop and it fell into many pieces. I've WAY over salted eggs before that my husband gagged when he put them in his mouth. And like you, I've dropped a dessert...my birthday cake :( But that we definitely ate off the floor too!
i actually can't think of anything *bad* that's happened in the kitchen. not saying nothing has ever happened to me, i'm sure it has, just can't think of anything at the moment.....ah well.
loving your breakfasts, and those veggies look sooo goooood.
I tried my hand at home-made bread for the first time when I was in about the fifth grade. I did it the old-fashioned way, complete with sponge, kneading, and several rising cycles. It looked and smelled perfect, but when I bit into it I found I had forgotten the salt! Though you wouldn't think it, salt is crucial to yeast breads. It wasn't a huge disaster because nobody was counting on me, but it did turn me off bread making for the next ten years. I only got up the courage again when my mother bought a machine to do all the work for me, so I wouldn't be too angry if it didn't turn out well.
My husband doesn't like to split meals either! Drives me crazy sometimes ;) Those veggies look wonderful... prefect for a warm summer's night. My biggest flop of late--I was making a yummy strawberry cake for my sister-in-laws birthday in my stand mixer. Instead on pulling the lever that locks the top in place, I pulled the beater lever, turning it on high speed and sending strawberry cake batter all over me and the kitchen. I think I lost about 1/3 of the cake!
Biggest kitchen flop: almost burning the house down by leaving a big pot of simmering beans on the stove while I went to the grocery store. Luckily, a friend came over to our house, noticed the odd noises and smells in the kitchen, and added more water to the beans. He saved the day! :)
While I am game for most anything in the kitchen, I am definitely not the best cook. I have had a couple of flops - the first time my MIL came over, I made a one pot recipe that involved pork roast, potatoes, and pickled peppers. In the middle of it, it suddently dawned on me (why then, I have no idea), that I had never made it before and I panicked. The end result was way over cooked pork, and undercooked potatoes. Everything was so dry. For dessert that night, I made a peach and blueberry cobbler with drop biscuits on top. The peach and blueberry part of the cobbler was ok, but the biscuits were under cooked, so when I went to serve it the uncooked center sort of oozed out. You should have seen my MIL trying to eat it all. The poor lady.
Another day, I was making potato soup to go with paninis for my husbands Aunt and Uncle who were coming over to help us break in our new panini maker. All of a sudden these big black flakes started floating to the top of the soup and on taste test, it was awful. I have no idea what they were or where they were coming from, but I was horrified. I made my husband run to the store and buy cans of soup I could heat really quick and flushed the bad soup down the toilet. I was afraid to throw it in the trash because it was hot and I didn't have time to let it cool and it made the whole house smell awful so I didn't want to wait for it to cool. It was February (in NY) and I had all the windows in the apartment open trying to air the place out before they came over. I figure now something sat on the bottom of the pot too long and burned, but really, I have no idea what or how.
I could go on all day with this (oh, there was the first time I used a grill and set the burgers on fire), but those were the 2 worst that stick out in my mind. My husband existed on take out for a few days after both incidents because I was not willing to try cooking right away afterward.
I am a nanny and one time I made the kids "fish sticks" but when they bit into them it was fried cheese!!!! The kids were happy and I was not happy they had cheese for dinner....
Thanks for having an awesome giveaway! My biggest flop has got to be "Easy Yorkshire Mini-Puddings" - they were awful - like greasy dough bits. We had to throw them out and go out for dinner that night.
My sister and I have many baking flops. We like to refer to them as "The Great Cake Disaster of '08", "The Great Cookie Disaster of '09", etc. Generally these involve us trying to substitute our own ingredients for something in a recipe... Sometimes it turns out great, but other times... FLOP! :)
One of my biggest flops was when I first tried making a thick, balsamic glaze. I didn't watch the pan closely enough, and the vinegar totally evaporated! No glaze whatsoever! ;)
My biggest flop was when I was in 5th grade. We lived in VT and I had spent all Saturday morning baking a cake for family lunch. At the end of lunch my mom announced that I'd made a special treat. I was so excited, I ran into the kitchen got the cake out of the fridge. I was so proud, as I rounded the corner I slipped and the cake went flying. I immediatly started crying and ran off.
One time we had my in-laws over for dinner and decided it would be a great time to try a new recipe - big mistake. It was a pork roast w/ plum sauce and for some reason the sauce called for a lot of salt. It turned out WAY too salty (pork is salty enough in my opinion). They were polite and ate it anyway. Another time (recently) we were roasting bok choy in the oven and half way through I salted it not knowing my husband already did, then I added mirin when it came out of the oven (without tasting it first). Ugh, another terribly salty dish. I ate it anyway though b/c I love bok choy.
I used to work in a bakery,so of course I had to work EVERY holiday. One Thanksgiving in particular I got done and decided last minute to make a vegan cream pie for me and my boyfriend to eat at the celebration. So I got the stuff-went home threw it together got ready and was out the door in about 30 minutes. Now because I am a baker people always expect a little more from my desserts-but when I brought it out- it had never set up! I don't know if I used to much liquid or just didn't give it enough time, but everyone kept calling it "poop soup pie"! Of course I was laughing about it too but nonetheless,it was quite the disaster!
at the end of highschool i was in charge of making a poppyseed cake for my graduation party. somewhere along the line of baking the cake i completely forgot to add the flour! it came out of the oven and i was puzzled as to why it only filled 1/2 the pan...then realized my mistake. well....my dad is gluten free so i guess i just wanted to be extra careful by not adding flour!!
I love to share when we go out to eat too, I like little bits of everything, not just one solid entree!
My biggest kitchen flop? The one that I can think of off hand was when I made made pesto and tried to fry up some zucchini to go with the spaghetti and pesto. It was a HUGE zucchini from my Aunt's garden and it was getting late, everything else was already done and I still had to fry it up and it turned out completely chewy and/or rock hard and was not enjoyable in the least bit.
Also, everytime I bake bread it's basically a flop story. I could be a good brick layer though... :P
My biggest kitcheb flop was last year, at my best friend 25th birtday party, I came all dressed up to the restaurant with a big chocolate cake in my hands, and I just dont know why and how it ended on my best friend dress, very embarassing!
When I first started dating my boyfriend, I wanted to try a ton of new recipes on him. I attempted to make a lentil soup in my crock pot, but a small crock pot + too many lentils + not enough water = an overflowing lentil loaf! It did NOT taste good, but he doused it in hot sauce and still ate it. That's when I kenw he was a keeper...
I work in restaurant kitchens. One time I was making a HUGE batch of Chili. Open up a few big cans of Chili Sauce and thought I could juggle carrying two to the pot. Chili Sauce = FAIL. Dropped both cans on the floor and they splattered all over my pants. I was the only one in the kitchen at the time and a few moments later my boss came in and just laughed because he didn't know what to say.
My biggest flop was definitely taking a freshly baked chocolate pudding pecan pie out of the oven, covering it with foil to transport to a party, and half the pie solidified onto the foil! Including all of the pecans! Failure.
Once I was making banana bread and I used salt instead of sugar... That's what I get for keeping salt and sugar in almost exactly the same container. I fixed that after the incident :)