Behind the Blog

If you are familiar with Dave and I, you know things don't always go according to plan.  We are wired differently than most people and each other most days.  Add our clumsiness and we have a potential disaster at every corner so we thought cooking together was the way to go :)  If you're in the mood for a silly story, please join us for Behind the Blogs.

Tuscan Chicken Catastrophe
One bitter winters day, Dave and I returned home after a long trialing day of dreaded Christmas shopping.  My nerves had been tried by every makeup artist in the mall attacking me trying to sell me "the best makeup product ever created" and I decided to take a warm shower to relax, remove the makeup they put up and down my arms and so I would not take my frustrations out on the innocent and loving Dave. While in the shower, I suddenly began a very agitated cough and thought to myself, "Great! Getting sick is just what I need to cheer my spirits."  Little did I know Dave decided to surprise me by starting our cooking project while I was attempting to release my tension.

As I finish my shower and walk out into the apartment, I am overtaken with smoke.  Swimming through the sea of smoke, I turn the corner into the kitchen to find Dave flipping the chicken breast that has now become unrecognizably blackened.  Shocked I asked him what he was doing. His response, "Cooking the chicken."  Flabbergasted I say, "Its black! Why are you cooking the chicken that is already black?!?!"  Dave's saddened face simply says, "It's not done on the inside."

At this point I was trying desperately to remember that Dave is new to cooking and he probably did not understand that you need to turn the heat down when the inside of something isn't cooking fast enough.  As an engineer it makes sense to turn the heat up if something isn't hot enough but it was hopeless, my temper had the best of me.  Trying to hide my fury, I asked Dave to go to the store and get more chicken and the other items we needed for the week and he quickly scrambled out the door to try to amend the situation.

A long while later Dave returns home bearing only one item... Vaseline.  Sleep deprived and enraged I ask about the chicken.  I could see his heart break as he asked, "What chicken?" Instead of explaining that I had asked him specifically to pick up chicken so we could eat dinner I simply asked what we were supposed to eat.  His reply hit me like a bag of potatoes, "The chicken I cooked."  Confused tired and angry I ask, "Why on earth would we eat the blackened and now chilled chicken."  The puzzled Dave simply replied, "Its not cold, I put it in the oven at 350 before I left."  Hopeless at this point (2 am), I collapsed to the floor and said I was retiring for the evening.