2.19.2008

when good ideas take that wrong turn...

i should know better. truly. every now and then, i get a fantastic idea and then my tiny voice (eh, or voices. whatever.) says, but wait....it would be so much better if we did this. c'mon, do it!!!

this time it started with pork chops and slow cooking them, then shredding them, dousing it all in some lovely barbecue sauce, and narfing them down with hubby for dinner. then those blasted creative juices started firing off. waaaait...there's that can of pickled jalapeno peppers in the pantry that you've been shuffling around for months now. what would happen if we drained that, threw in a can of diced tomatoes and their juice, and let everything simmer a bit??

you'll singe the fuck out of your mouth just from the fumes, that's what'll happen. dumbass.

it wasn't a total loss. i learned all kinds of nifty things from the internet about what will help cut the fire out of a spicy dish. never got everything to die off completely, but there was *significant* improvement.

the resulting hot mess (and i mean that in every way that you could possibly interpret that phrase) was served over rice and was edible. and i'm just now getting the feeling back in my lips and tongue. j luckily is much fonder of the spicy foods than i am, and he proclaimed it to be yummy, if a bit still on the spicy side.

me 'n my bright ideas...

also. if anyone ever tells you that it's easy to rinse hellfire off of shredded pork to rescue it? they're totally lying.

5 comments:

The Stepford Stepmom said...

How is it that your blog always causes me to confess the bloopers I've had during my home-making life? LOL!

Back before I was Mrs. Stepford (and was still in high school) my mother went out of town, leaving me in charge of the care and feeding of my father and brother. I was a confident cook, so cooking dinner was easy-peasy for me. I decided one day to cook ground beef pockets, which I'd done 100 times with my mother. But this time, they weren't quite right. They were missing... SOMETHING. So I went pantry diving and brought out a bottle of spice that I thought was a spice mix which would perk it up a bit. I dumped it into my ground beef mixture, but it tasted AWFUL.

So I called my mother and said "I used that spice mix for all foods you have in your pantry, and it made the ground beef taste nasty!" She asked what I was talking about, because she had no spice mixes in the cupboards. I told her "You do too... I used it. It's called Allspice."

Stupid me, I thought that Allspice was like ALL spice... Like a spice medly/mixture like Mrs. Dash... That you can put into anything and have it taste better. Yeah... Not so much.

It's been like 10 years since then, but I still get teased for it by my family. :-/

Cooking bloopers happen. It's all part of the fun... Look at it this way... You know it didn't come from a box because it's not perfect. :)

Anonymous said...

Heh. I like to embellish recipes too. Can't just leave a sure-fired thing alone. Sort of like WordPress themes. Gotta ferk wid them.

cricket said...

@the stepford wife: it's my super power...getting people to talk about stuff they didn't even know they wanted to talk about :D ohhhhhhhh no...not the dreaded allspice mishap!! and very true about perfection! you can share any time :)

@psychicgeek: but of course!! :D

~**Dawn**~ said...

Wandered over here from Thirty-Something Bloggers. I have to give you credit for trying something creative! I can cook but I need the recipe in front of me & I think I can count the number of times I've gone off in my own direction on one hand.

cricket said...

@dawn: i don't know what it is that sometimes makes me all brave in the kitchen...just as many times i feel like i've gotta follow a recipe to the letter...it's definitely liberating though to improvise and have it turn out well! :) thanks for stopping by! :)

 

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