#kitchendisasters

Do you know that moment when you take a pie or cake out from the oven or lift the lid of a pan of pasta and you smell success. It’s best feeling in the world. There will be many that would say that successes barely strikes them in kitchen and I totally understand that. Nobody was born to have immediate success in the kitchen, well maybe there are some.

When I woke up one morning, I was confused as to what I should have for breakfast. The weather outside was strange, it was neither too cold nor was it too hot. As I was catching on the missed episodes of My Kitchen Rules, I thought of having a smoothie. A perfectly blended smoothie for breakfast was a good idea. 

Like a girl of this century, I unlocked my phone and went on to Pinterest. Pinterest is always a life saviour for almost everything. I had a few strawberries and yogurt so I began to search accordingly but unfortunately, every recipe I read required the smoothie to have one banana. This was not good.

I turned to google and searched for the alternatives for banana’s in a smoothie. I got a lot of answers to my problem and I found peanut butter would help me. I was so happy that I went through more recipes to make something for myself. Just when I thought peanut butter solved all my problems away, I needed frozen strawberries for my perfect smoothie. 

I was already starving and I didn’t know how I was going to freeze my strawberries. I decided to let it freeze for a bit but freezing them for an hour made no difference. 

So now I have barely frozen strawberries, some yogurt and peanut butter. I put the peanut butter and yogurt into the blender and blend it and then I cut my barely frozen strawberries in quarters, (Stupid really, honestly I’m not too sure why I did that when it is going get blended)

I pour my “smoothie” into a mason jar make it more fancy and layer it with more strawberries only to find them sinking into my smoothie. The consistency reminded me of a soup.

I made a breakfast soup!

Maybe I invented it all!

Excited, I sit down with it, topped my now soup with some granola for crunch and searched on Google to see if there was anything such as breakfast soup;

Well what do you know, I didn’t invent breakfast soup. 

~Sapphire Castle

I have been thinking about beef stew for weeks, ever since it first began to get chilly.  There’s something about this time of year that makes me want to cook.  I’ve been thinking a lot about chili and roasted root vegetables and pots of pinto beans too!

But some of those things are time consuming, so I picked up stew beef when I saw it on sale, got all the vegetables I wanted late last week, and planned to tackle the stew this weekend.

It was a busy weekend as always, so I made my preparations in stages:  On Friday night I floured and browned the beef, and sauteed the onions, peppers, celery, and herbs from my garden, then put all that in the stockpot and refrigerated it.  Saturday evening I added the liquid and started simmering.

Finally, this afternoon was the time for chopping vegetables (lots and LOTS of vegetables) and letting it all cook together so we could have it for supper.

Well, I put the pot on the stove and turned it up high to get it boiling.  I didn’t realize that all the beef had settled to the bottom of the pot.  I didn’t think and I didn’t pay attention until I smelled the scorching.  By the time I moved the pot off the stove the damage was done–only a few pieces of beef were burned, but the broth had that terrible scorched taste.

I’ll end your suspense right now and tell you that with a lot of work I was able to pretty much fix the stew.  And I’m going to tell you the steps I took–thanks to all those genius internet cooks out there–in case something like this ever happens to you.

First, a no-brainer:  I transferred it all to another pot, with NO SCRAPING involved.

Second, I peeled and halved two potatoes and cooked them in the broth for about thirty minutes to absorb some of the flavor.  Then I repeated it with another pair of potatoes. (The potatoes got added to the dogs’ dinner, so we are all winners!)

Third, I threw in a couple of pieces of bacon and some all-purpose “BBQ” seasoning, meant to fool the tastebuds into interpreting that burned taste as though it were meant to be there!

Fourth, I added more liquid to the stew (which I would have been doing in any case), beer, as it happens–and threw in a few more beef bouillon cubes.

Fifth, I put in some apple cider vinegar and a couple of spoons of sugar.

I tasted after each step, and yes, it was getting better, but the taste was still lurking.  It was at this point that all the vegetables were finally chopped and ready to be added and I may as well tell you what they were:  rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, sweet potatoes, carrots, and three kinds of potatoes.

Finally, when the vegetables had softened I added the final ingredient, which completely got rid of the lingering source.  What I want to know is why this works and who thought of it.  I imagine some frantic crazy woman so exasperated with the bad taste of her stew that she just yelled, “The hell with it!” before dumping in a spoonful of …

PEANUT BUTTER.

Yes, that’s right.  And it was like a miracle.  It melted right in and took away the bad smell like creamy peanutty magic.