My kitchen is a disaster. I’m clawing my way out of a horrific scene, one contaminated with multiple cutting boards, whisks, bowls, and measuring cups. A kitchen chair sits in the middle of the cooking area, used to frantically search for a ladle in the midst of my task. Spice jars removed from the spice cabinet clutter the teeny, tiny counter space that remained uninhabited in the frenzy that was my attempt to make gumbo, which in turn requires a roux. Every once in a while I get an urge to make something brand, spanking new. Something from scratch. It always seems like a great idea and I have even buffered the prep and cooking time for new recipes because my experience has been that the first time always takes me way longer than the instructions indicate. Things were going ok until the “STIR CONSTANTLY” part came along. It was around this time that I started to notice how hot it was in the house. I had a few windows open this morning but the mid-eighties temperatures, partnered with my hovering over the pot (whisk in hand, flour at the ready) caused me to be uncomfortably hot and agitated all at once. I followed the directions and got a nice color to my roux (and an arm workout) but the consistency just wasn’t like the picture. After 30 minutes I conceded and started over, this time with the air conditioning turned on! Needless to say, it was a horrible experience and one that I may not attempt again, depending on how the family reacts to the finished gumbo. The ONLY thing that could have made this experience ANY worse would have been if my iPad had gone to sleep in the middle of my desperate efforts to complete the recipe. I was, of course, reading the recipe off of my iPad Mini because paper is, like, so yesterday:) And luckily this isn’t the first time I have used it for following a recipe, therefore I knew to change the setting for when the iPad would go to sleep to “Never”. Admit it, you were wondering when the tech part of this post was going to get here! To change the amount of time that your iPad stays awake, start in Settings>General>Auto-Lock. Then select the number of minutes or Never as an option. I personally think there should be a way to customize the amount of time instead of picking from a list. Maybe there is and I haven’t discovered it yet. That’s totally possible. Once I completed the recipe I changed my setting back to 15 minutes so that I wouldn’t run my battery down too fast.
I’m exhausted and wondering when the cleaning fairy will arrive to clean my kitchen. Hopefully he gets here soon because I just remembered seeing a recipe for lemon cupcakes with blueberry creme frosting. Hmmm…maybe I can mix them on the floor!