10.29.2008

My Productive Weekend and Why I'm Never Eating Fried Chicken Again

I baked chocolate chip cookies yesterday. They turned out a little burnt, but overall delicious.



Today, I rearranged my apartment. I can't say I like it anymore than I liked it yesterday, but it's nice to just change things up now and again. Plus, my dining table is much closer to my TV, which makes it far more likely I'll use it.

I also took Reagan into the shop today. About a month ago, I was going along and a squirrel tried to commit suicide... death by bike tire. I "slammed" on my brakes, and one of them made a little pop sound. After that, it didn't work quite right.

So I finally got a free day to take Reagan into my local bike shop, Shosie's Cyclery. And I'd like to say they are awesome.

Shop Owner: "Oh, yeah... that's no problem. It looks like the cable slipped. I can fix that right up."



"Oh... your tires are really low. Lemme fill those up while we're at it."

"You know, this bag in the front here is really meant for underneath the seat. I can move your reflector so it fits."

"It appears one of the spokes on the chain gear is bent. I'll just fix that real quick."



"Your brakes are a little crooked. I can adjust that."



... And on it went. Where I was expecting to have to leave Reagan overnight and pay for that one brake problem, I got 5 times the service completely free and super fast.

The owner even gave me some tire advice for my triathlons.

And that's why I'm totally loving them. So, if you live in or are visiting the Stateline, go to Shosie's Cyclery. Shosie's Cyclery. Shosie's Cyclery. Shosie's Cyclery. That should just about do it.

When I got home, I was supposed to go run, but Reagan just looked so good and her tires were all filled and waiting. Plus, I just can't resist those puppy eyes of hers. So I took her for a spin. The "spin" was supposed to be long, but about 2 minutes into our ride, I thought, Man, I am the stupidest person alive for riding my bike without gloves on. I don't remember the last time I rode my bike in cold(er) weather, so I was not expecting my hands to completely freeze at 15 mph.

____________________________________

My evening has been spent cooking myself dinner. I'm not the greatest cook, which is why I don't do it that often (plus, I don't like to clean up afterwards).

So, before I had even washed my chocolate chip cookie dishes,



I was making oven-fried chicken.

This was a more daunting task than I had anticipated. First off, I couldn't find any skinless chicken legs, so I bought the skinned kind and figured it wouldn't be that hard to skin them.




... Boy was I wrong. Who knew a seemingly simple task could be so gross and smelly?! (Yes, smelly. It kinda smelled like a wet dog. Blehhh).



Halfway through one of the legs, my hand was bleeding. Oh my God, I cut myself!

Oh wait... that's not ME bleeding, it's the chicken. MY DINNER IS BLEEDING. This just totally turned me off to chicken. Even if I manage to make this, will I even want to eat it?!

I never seemed able to get the skin completely off the leg, so I would pull it down as far as possible and just cut off the extra. Oh well, I tried.

The biggest problem, however, didn't come about until the chicken had been in the oven for 15 minutes.



A) My kitchen started to fill with smoke. Apparently you canNOT replace parchment paper with wax paper. Woops.



B) My chicken legs were burning and looking funky.



I could NOT figure out what I did wrong... until I reread the recipe. That's when I realized you cannot replace buttermilk with powdered buttermilk (at least not when you're making a buttermilk marinade).

So I threw out my legs.

And every bad chef knows that at this point in the cooking process... you give up and order pizza.



Next time I cook something, maybe I'll just skip over the "effort" and "mess" parts and go straight to the delicious cheesy ending.

PS: My lovely boyfriend points out that powdered buttermilk can be made into liquid buttermilk simply by adding water (it even says so on the box!). This makes me an even BIGGER idiot!

...I was marinading chicken legs in POWDER.

4 comments:

Rainmaker said...

Haha! I've made the wax paper vs parchment paper mistake before. I actually had it exit my oven - on fire - and float across my kitchen. Oh, and I had 15 guests over. It was awesome!

Btw, side note - chicken should not smell. If it does, something is wrong. But, it sounds like you avoided issues with the Pizza. :)

Anonymous said...

What is wrong with your mother, didn't she teach you how to cook? Bad Mother, Bad Mother!!

Marcy said...

HAHAHAHHAHAHA! YOU ARE SO LIKE ME!! I love it! HAHAHAA Whenever I use the oven the smoke detector goes off (no joke) The kids are so used to this that they'll yell "MOM I GOT IT" and start waving their books at that smoke detector to fan away the smoke HAHA!

Anonymous said...

You are definetly one of a kind,CHUCKLE >>>CHUCKLE...OPA CHUCKLE

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