The Nest

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 9:25 AM

chaos in the kitchen

By Amy

I don't know if I'm a bad cook, but I'm certainly an inexperienced one. But when SO, who can cook and brought stuff like pots and pans and a garlic press into my world, moved in, we started grocery shopping and cooking, and, with a lot of help from a local online grocey store, I've been doing pretty well on my nights to cook...until last night.

When I'm shopping for entrees, I generally stick to the Ready to Cook and Heat and Eat categories, but there's this new section of One-Click Recipes--you click and they send you all of the stuff for a given recipe. There was a $10 coupon if you got one of the recipe things, so I went for it. Knowing myself and my culinary limitations, I chose an easy one, clicked, entered my promo code at checkout, and was ready.

It pretty much falls apart after that. I'd been spoiled by the Ready to Cook and Heat and Eat. When those arrive, there's almost nothing you have to do to make dinner. I thought Recipes would be the same deal--just add what they send and you're set. But no, you have to MEASURE your ingredients while you're cooking--a basic to be sure, but it was lost on me after months of Heat and Eat and Ready to Cook coddling. I put tripple the amount of lemon juice (that I squeezed myself) and added double the amount of walnuts. Insted of a light pasta dish with artichokes and a lemony kick I ended up with a bowl of soggy citrus-soaked walnuts (chopped) and barely-noticable artichokes (minced).

It looked gross, really gross, but SO and I gamely gave it a try. It tasted B-A-D. SO had a theory about what happened (he knows me) and he compared the bag that the not-so-pre-measured walnuts came in and put it all together. We were still laughing about it this morning when we woke up. And I have a feeling I'm never going to live this one down. Fortunately I didn't add the walnut surprise to the big pot of pasta (just in case we didn't like it), so we took the untainted noodles, added a jar of marinara and called it dinner.

I'm not giving up so if anyone has tips or ideas for easy meals, or war stories, let me know!

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