Burn, Baby, Burn

No, it's really not a Disco reference. It has to do with my cooking skills, or my lack of cooking skills. Don't get me wrong - my family eats, and they eat well. I go to a place that helps you prepare all the food once a month so that we can have home cooked meals. All I need to do is drag it out of the deep freeze, toss the prepared stuff in the oven/crock pot/stove and cook it, then maybe add a side dish or two. Sounds easy enough, even I can do this, right? Then you don't know me very well...

Let's go back a few weeks to the Blueberry Buckle. Did I mention that they also have a dessert once a month? This thing looked great. It was a pan FULL of blueberries and the rest of the buckle stuff. All I needed to do was to cook it for 50 minutes. Well, the buzzer went off on the oven and Tom kindly, at my request, turned the oven off. I told him I'd be right up, then I got disracted and never made it back up to the kitchen until MUCH later on that night. Well, something smelled like it was burning/had burned. Seems that the buckle had been in the HOT oven for about 4 hours or so. Blueberries don't like that very much, nor do oats or brown sugar, I'm sure. It was crispy, very crispy. The middle was a bit softer so I took a bite, and while it tasted yummy, that was probably the only bite that I could have takenfrom that whole pan. Tom laughed, I sighed, and the buckle went in the trash.

Fast forward to last night. I had these great pizzas that I made at the cooking place that were Basil Pesto and Chicken pizza. Not really something Tom would like, but no biggie. I was off getting my nails done and he ate dinner with the kids. When I got back I tossed the pizza in the oven and set the timer for the requisite 40 minutes. Then, I sat down at the kitchen table, so as not to forget or miss anything. The timer went DING and I hopped up, mouth watering. Well, seems that it was 40 minutes in someone else's oven, but only really about 30 in mine. The edges were burnt to a crisp, the bottom was dark brown and black, and the cheese on top was crispy. Man, I am just not going to win this cooking battle, am I. I thought I was so cool - I can follow directions - I can cook anything. Well, seems that I need to sit in front of the oven and watch the food cook so as not to completely screw it up. Once again, Tom laughed (referenced the Blueberry Buckle incident), I sighed, then I ate pizza. While the Buckle was paste dible, the pizza wasn't, and it was quite yummy.

Did I mention that the fire alarm went off in the midst of this? Here's a picture of it, sitting next to the pizza, after Tom pulled it off the wall...