Culinary Misadventures With the Kiddo, Day 2

Gads, I can't even blame today's disaster--yes, it rates the level of disaster since it far exceeds a misadventure--on the kiddo because he wasn't even involved. I find my desire to spend time in the kitchen decimated after what's happened. Gentle readers, prepare yourself to either go blind from rolling your eyes at my stupidity or laugh yourself into a gut ache. (So that there are no ruined LCDs, please be sure to clear your mouth and throat of all liquids before continuing on. Spit takes are likely.)

Curse You, Christopher Kimball!
No, it's not dear Christopher Kimball who deserve a pox. It's that little minx who led the black bean soup recipe spot, Becky Hays. How dare she make such a simple recipe look so damn simple! How dare she make me think I could make such a simple recipe without screwing it up! Just who does she think she is?

Perhaps I should write a letter to the fine folks at Cook's Illustrated (who I could never curse, really--even when they inspire in such false hope for success) and ask them how to unburn black beans. Or to stop using such fine appliances in their test kitchen and substitute instead a circa 1980 beat-down Lady Kenmore gas stove. Or to plan to kickbox while cooking something but getting interrupted by a 5-year-old impatient little boy having a tantrum because his damn video game is not working.

Ahh, there's where to lay the blame for the black beans that cooked for 90 minutes and wound up overcooked because the crappy Lady Kenmore's terrible temperature control allowed all the water to boil away: Lego Star Wars. I rue the day I brought the damnedable video game into this house. I doubly rue the day I brought the sequel into this house. I'm sure I'll soon be ruing the day I brought their associate, Lego Indiana Jones, into this house.

(Will that stop me from bringing home Lego Batman: The Videogame once it comes out? In the immortal words of Sri Whitney Houston, "Hell to the no!")

Let this be a lesson to you, Gentle Reader and Fellow Faudie: Don't try to kickbox and do some PC repair while making a black bean soup recipe--or any recipe, really--for the first time. Especially when you gleaned the recipe from a TV show segment you rewatched only three times to verify what was said.

The kiddo and I did head out on a little walk (I did the walking while the kiddo did the riding in his wagon) to HPB (it's not an addiction--it's a disease), then across Parmer to HEB for another bag of black beans and two boxes of chicken broth* and then back up to Sonic to celebrate (woowoo!) the five-year anniversary of walking off an elevator in a Seoul apartment high-rise and becoming a mom before finally heading home for a shower (for me) and a nap (for the kiddo, although I felt like I needed one after the morning I'd had).

I did try the recipe again this afternoon. It's still in the pot on the stove. I haven't tried it yet, and the kiddo claims he's going to have that for supper instead of the customary Tuesday Pizza. (Shocker of all shockers, I know!) Even if the kiddo remembers that he is anal retentive and cannot stand to deviate from the standard routine and has pizza, I'll probably have a little of the soup. I'll report later on how badly I botched the second go-round. I already know that I threw in way too early the cumin and crushed red pepper with the sauteed veggies you add after the beans are cooked, and I strongly suspect I didn't let the beans cook at the right temperature (not entirely my fault) to get to the right degree of tenderness. And then there's that issue of the beans probably splitting when I threw in the two cups of cold chicken broth I'd been storing in the fridge. (The HEB bean sack warns users not to pour cold liquid onto the cooked beans because doing so will cause them to split. And I did read this before I added that chicken broth. Yes, I am a blonde, even if it is chemically enhanced.)

Blaine the Train Is a Pain
A few months back, I ordered a deeply discounted gingerbread train kit from the King Arthur Flour online catalog. Around the holidays, the husband and I let the boy watch one of Food Network's holiday gingerbread house competitions, and he'd already the previous year made gingerbread folks with my mom after reading that creepy tale of the gingerbread man. So for last year's Pancha Ganapati celebration, we made Ganesh a shrine--out of gingerbread. It was...interesting. Probably should have been condemned for shoddy construction, so that ensured no deity would have come near it, and I doubt any demon would have either.

Since the kiddo seemed to enjoy building the gingerbread shrine/tenement slum (stressed the hell out of me), I thought the gingerbread train kit would be a hit. The $6 price tag was right on the mark, plus it came with a plastic stand to help builders hold up the walls. (This construction step had been a major problem for us with the shrine/slum.) And the kiddo was indeed thrilled when it arrived, but I've put off building it until now.

Do I need to mention how putting off construction on a product that had been baked probably more than a year ago was not the smartest thing? Do I need to mention how I didn't learn how not to stress out over these things since our last encounter with gingerbread? Do I need to mention that I was freebasing the ready-to-use royal icing by the end of construction?

Despite my hangups, the kiddo was quite pleased with the project. I nicknamed the dilapidated thing Blaine in honor of the demonic mono from The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass. Like Blaine in King's novels, our little ramshackle train wants us to think it's cheery and friendly, what with all that candy attached and its edible (well, once up on a time it was probably edible) structure, but we all know well that the gingerbread house Hansel and Gretel came upon was one big lure put out by a crone practicing cannibalism. (She was probably a foodie cannibal, what with her need to fatten up Hansel like he's foie gras.) Eddie, Susannah and Jake didn't trust Blaine in King's tale, and I don't trust this Blaine either. Plus that icing I was freebasing gave me a right royal gut ache.

Serves me right....

*Even if I hadn't burned the beans, I would have eventually screwed up the recipe because I didn't have the necessary six cups of chicken broth on hand. I guess the burned beans was the universe's way of asking in disgust, "You still haven't learn to make sure you have all the ingredients in the right quantity before starting any recipe?"