Do not try this at home
Posted by Pat Detmer on Dec 20th, 2007
I'm not much of a cook. In fact, I'm not much of anything when it comes to that room that we call "the kitchen," the one with the refrigerator and other mysterious machinery in it.
My mother was a consummate pie maker, and I decided this holiday that I would recreate her pumpkin pie. I'd also recently had an excellent pumpkin spice bar, and I decided to try that as well.
Because I don't have the appropriate brain cells for this kind of thing, I called my little sister Barbie — her original package included a robust memory card — and she walked me through the pie-making process. I asked Barb if she had the filling recipe, and she said that Mom would just buy the pre-made cans and would spice it to taste.
So I go to the grocery store (always difficult for me. See chapter 54 in my "Laughing All The Way" book: "Patty Goes to the Grocery Store," which is much like when Jeffy from Family Circus goes anywhere) and I buy my ingredients.
Once home, I open the can of pumpkin expecting to be able to pour it out, and the stuff is the consistency of clay. What the ...????!!!!?!??! What am I supposed to do with this? Even though I'm exceedingly stupid about these things, I figure out almost immediately that I've purchased the wrong can. This is just pumpkin, and I needed the pumpkin pie filling. But I'm already into the process and decide that I'll make it work. I know I'll need to moisten it up, and so I use the evaporated milk that I had for the pumpkin spice bar recipe. I can't get the can open with the electric opener and end up using a beer opener, and as it dribbles out I read the upside-down label and realize that I've purchased sweetened condensed milk by mistake. And the amazing thing is that I walked around the grocery store for 15 minutes searching for evaporated milk. Where should that be, I wondered? Near the milk? Near other evaporated things like instant mashed potatoes? I was flummoxed and ended up asking for help, and still grabbed the wrong thing!
So I put the pie in the oven — I know it will suck — and I proceed to the pumpkin spice dessert, figuring that this will be my salvation. The recipe says: "Reserve 1/4 to 1/3 of the crust for topping. Press the remaining crust in the pan and bake for 10 minutes." Well of course I miss the "reserve" part, and I put all the crust in the pan and put it in the oven and I wait and I wait and ... what the hell was wrong? It was supposed to take 10 minutes to bake to crispiness, but it wasn't melting the way it was supposed to.
That's when I re-read the instructions and realized what I'd done, so I took the pan — now approximately the same temperature as tiles from the belly of a space shuttle on re-entry — out of the oven, and scraped the partially melted crust into a bowl and tried again.
When I'd shopped for groceries, I'd done one thing right: I'd picked up a bottle of champagne. As my Pumpkin Surprise desserts baked, I drained it. No instructions necessary.
at 10:58 a.m.
lol...always start with the champagne first!! I am staying out of the kitchen this year....just one more "gift" I decided to give my family!!!