Well another week has gone by already - hard to believe. We, again, did not go away last Friday as it was not only to rain, but there was a chance of snow also. That is 6 one day trips planned (to more or less the same place) since the start of the year- and one trip taken.
As an accountant I have been busy doing income taxes - well, not so busy - I used to do many more returns than I do now - but somehow it takes the same time - I am sure you all know the concept of the work expands to fit the time. I have 3 returns sitting here each missing one piece of info to finish. I have extensions and estimates to prepare for one client who is not ready to file yet - an annual practice as he is away the first part of the year. I have another client who owes me info for 3 - yes 3 - years of tax returns and promised to send it. I would hate for them to lose their refunds.
Today we went out food shopping - sometimes one just has to do a big food shopping instead of just fill in. So there was a lot of food to put away when we got home - luckily none of it for the fridge or freezer. Well, I had planned to get butter free with the order and buy eggs, but the coupon for the butter was from another market - oops - and they did not have any extra large eggs. So we were able to stop at the service station and have our mechanic install two air filters he ordered for us. So when we got home, of course I just left the food out in the kitchen and went upstairs to pay bills and check for tax info. This left shopping bags and and a box of food around our tiny kitchen. It needed to be put away before I cooked.
Of course I got downstairs late to prepare dinner and had to do it around the groceries as I did not have a chance to put anything away. I had bought a box of Bisquick which I planned to use to make biscuits tonight to have with dinner - chicken, cream of mushroom soup, and vegetables over the biscuits. I have make biscuits like this many times, although not for this reason. The recipes I use is no longer on their boxes, so after coming downstairs late - I had to go find my backs of prior Bisquick boxes collection - in a folder of loose recipes on the shelf with the cookbooks. I knew where it was, but I had to climb over stuff to get to it and find which box back had the correct recipe. So now I am running late, have bags and large box taking up most of the space in my kitchen, have used more time looking for the recipe and I am about to start cooking.
Chicken defrosted in the microwave. We each have a different soup - but it is the second night we are having same so I can dump it into pots as both were split in half last night. So into the pots they go. I look at the recipe for the biscuits. Hmmm. They can be made as dumplings. I didn’t know that. Well, that is basically what we are using them for. I’ll make this recipe instead. And so started a nightmare. The dish I was cooking was simple - chicken breast cut in bite sized pieces and browned in the skillet. Cream of mushroom soup with 1/4 cup of milk for sauce. We wanted vegetables - husband carrots and me peas and carrots - so frozen vegetables had to be boiled - not a problem, it goes quickly. I made it into major cooking and a major mess.
I put up a medium pot - a couple of quarts - of water to boil as the recipe said to drop the mixed biscuit batter onto the boiling stew. Uh oh, says cook 10 minutes with no cover and then 10 minutes covered but that should be okay as we would have the soup before we needed it anyway. I mixed up half the recipe as it was just for two. I dropped the batter into the boiling water by the spoonful - per the recipes. I actually got the right number of dumplings - per the recipe. I then stepped away to cut up the now defrosted chicken.
I hear a noise at the stove and look over - the water is boiling over even though I turned it down to medium. I run over to see as it is the burner that has a bad thermostat and it sometimes goes to high when one is cooking at a lower temperature. No, the water is boiling over and the dumplings are, well, messy. I grab a large pot and slowly and carefully pour it all into the larger pot - after all - the problem must be that the pot is too small for the water and the dumplings. No, that is not the problem and the water is soon boiling over again. I finally get the stove to a low enough temperature for the water to be simmering and not boiling over.
I made the rest of the dinner. Husband comes down for dinner and I am still cooking as in addition to be late starting and working around the groceries it is taking much longer - and more pots - than I expected. The entire sight when he comes down is sort of like the end of “Woman of the Year”. For those who do not know this movie Katherine Hepburn does not know how to cook. She is coming back to her husband played by Spencer Tracy who she left a couple of days into the marriage and now she knows she made a mistake and has returned. She is a writer for a newspaper and is the Woman of the Year of the title and does not know how to cook or keep house. She attempts to make coffee (in an drip pot as was used then) and make waffles. When he comes into the kitchen he sees her struggling and sits down to read the newspaper. When it gets to the point that the coffee is shooting out the top of the coffee pot and the waffle has an air bubble in it that is about to burst and she starts crying he finally goes and shuts everything off. Well that is what the entire kitchen looked like tonight. (If you have not seen this movie - this one scene alone makes it worth while and is one of the funniest scenes ever filmed.)
My husband is surprised that he does not smell biscuits baking when he comes down and sees what is going on. Dumplings? Well, I figured we were using the biscuits as same anyway and I found the recipe on the box... He was disappointed. I tell him that if it is awful I will start over and make the biscuits - after the decades we have been together he takes this sort of thing passably well. (I suggested to him that he look at it as if we are newlyweds and I am still learning to cook and making a mistake - it would make us feel young again - he did not appreciate the idea. So in the end I had 3 dumplings and some small pieces instead of 5 and at least they were cooked through and we could eat them.
But - the problem was the mess. The stove was covered with goo that was the Bisquick and water that boiled over. The stove needed to be cleaned as a result of this. (Well, it needed to be cleaned anyway.) Luckily I managed to pick up most of the goo with paper towels and a large spoon and toss it out. I took the burner out that it had cooked on as it needed cleaning too and then I saw that It had oozed under the burner pan and I had to clean underneath also. “Oh well, there goes my night” I thought - not even sure I would get to write a post tonight.
I washed the dishes and other pots then dumped the large pot from the dumplings out in the toilet bowl - the stuff was too liquid for the garbage and too solid for the sink drain. I then set the pot to soak in the sink next to the dish pan I use to wash the dishes and started on actually cleaning the stove - having just sopped up the goo from it. I dropped the decorative rings around the burners and the burner pans (not their foil liners - they were tossed out) into the dishpan which still had hot soapy water in it to soak. I cleaned the stove - with lots of spray cleaner and paper towels.
When that was done I turned to the burner pans and rings. I had to go at them with steel wool and got them mostly clean. They are currently air drying in the dish washer (remember it doesn’t work and I use it as drying rack). The skillet from dinner still needs to be cleaned - it is cast iron and needs to go on the stove afterwards to heat to get water out of it so it doesn’t rust, so I figured that I would let the stove parts dry a bit first while I started the second load of laundry (I managed to get the first load started before starting to wash the dishes) and wrote this post.
Well, the stove needed cleaning anyway and now that is a job that can be checked off the list. I had spare foil pan liners for it and climbed up in the closet and got them out - ready to go into the burner pans when they go back.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Put stuff away as soon as you get it home.
The entire mess tonight would have been easier if I had put away the groceries when we got home. I would have at least the space to work. I still would have ended up making a mess and having excess stuff plus the stove to clean, but I would not have had to drape a towel over the groceries so that if water dripped on them they would not get wet - as they would not have been next to the sink.
I have since put away all the groceries.
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