Nov 022010
 

I had given Henry explicit instructions on what to get for the cupcakes while I was at work Thursday night. The plan was that he was going to bake them and then I would attempt to not look like an honorary member of The Dream Team while recreating what I saw in the last issue of Better Homes & Gardens (which somehow is delivered with my name on it, but Henry is always quick to whisk it from the mail slot before I throw it away).

When I came home from work, it was after 9pm and I quickly saw that Henry had not yet made the cupcakes.

“I’ll get to it,” he kept muttering.

I distracted myself by stuffing the treat bags with lame little Halloween party favors and candy. Then I panicked because I wasn’t sure if the game we had in mind was good enough, so I printed out Halloween mazes and stuffed those in the treat bags too. Goddamn children.

This took about fifteen minutes, start to finish. One could imagine how exhausted I was, having single-handedly carried this entire party on my back while Henry pranced around in his underwear.

Somewhere around 10:30pm, I found out that Henry had purchased red decorating gel instead of black. RED! I cornered him in the kitchen as he mixed the cupcake batter and laid into him for being so worthless, so stupid, so irresponsible, so UNRELIABLE.

We broke up for the second time that night, but he still put his big boy pants on and went back to the store in search of black decorating gel.

By the time he came back, I noticed that he also forgot the pretzel sticks/Frankenstein neck bolts.

“I just came back! I am not going to the store again!” Henry shouted.

I raised a knife.

We broke up again.

I know, I know: Erin, why didn’t you just go to the store yourself? And let that motherfucker win?! Never. Let me remind you that the fact I haven’t eaten meat since 1996 was born from my impenetrable stubbornness. My head, it is that of a bull. (And not just because I’m that ugly.)

“Just forget it!” I screamed. “Fuck the cupcakes! I just won’t take them!”

“Fine,” Henry mumbled, pushing past me and going to sit down on the couch.

“NO I’M JUST KIDDING WE NEED THE CUPCAKES OMG GET BACK IN THERE!” I yelled, heart rate up, left arm tingling. Ew I fucking hate parties. As Henry walked by to go back in the kitchen, I muttered, “But the cupcakes are going to look pathetic since you forgot the pretzels, good job.” I saw him tense up for a second, like he maybe was contemplating pushing me into the hot stove, but then he adjusted his Susie Homemaker ruffled apron and went back to ladling batter into the cupcake tray thing.

“Did you start cooking the spaghetti yet?” I asked. We needed a lot of spaghetti noodles for the stupid game that the other moms so thoughtfully left for me to come up with.

“Can I get through the cupcakes first?” he snipped, and we broke up again.

Around 11:30, the cupcakes were cooled off and it was time to start icing them. Henry mixed up a bowl of purple frosting while I struggled with the orange. I didn’t mix it well enough, so all the cupcakes I frosted had dark orange striations throughout them, and that’s on top of the sides I smashed in from gripping too hard.

“Look,” Henry instructed. “Turn the cupcake with your other hand so the frosting goes on easier.” But as usual, I ignored his tip and continued glooping on mounds of frosting before moving on to the frustrating task of smoothing that shit out.

I started to cry. Then I screamed, slammed down the cupcake I was working on, and marched out of the kitchen.

But not before breaking up again, followed by a death threat.

“You’re a fucking retard,” I heard Henry say as he examined the three cupcakes I managed to frost before having a full-blown temper seizure. I really believe that it takes a special kind of person to be able to work with sprinkles and frosting without winding with brain matter Pollacked across the kitchen wall.

I started to watch the Jersey Shore reunion show, mouth still molded into a scowl, until I realized that I couldn’t let Henry take all the credit for the cupcakes. And he would, too. I knew it. So I went back in the kitchen and pushed Henry out of the way. He had a plateful of large marshmallows which he had previously rolled through green glittery sprinkles. I picked one up and decided to start working on the Frankenstein heads, that maybe if I concentrated real hard on that, I could block out the fact that Henry was two feet away from me, making me hate life.

By then, it was midnight.

I did that high-pitched shriek that happens when something isn’t going my way.

“What?” Henry yelled.

“THIS BLACK GEL IS TOO THICK! THIS FRANKENSTEIN IS RUINED!” I hurled it into the garbage.

“Great,” Henry said sardonically. “Now we’re going to be short one marshmallow.” Turns out there was just enough green sprinkles for fourteen marshmallows, the exact number of kids in Chooch’s class. “If you weren’t being such a BITCH, I probably could have fixed that one,” Henry sneered and I wanted to skin him alive.

“Oh you think you’re so fucking perfect!” I spat. And we broke up so badly that I created a profile on Match.com.

Whoever lives in this house after us is going to be haunted by all the ire left clinging to the walls from our mutual belligerence. And that’s assuming we both make it out alive. Otherwise, someone might want to consider taking a wrecking ball to 3021 My Street.

Being short a marshmallow, I made the executive decision to only use half and do spiderwebs on the other cupcakes. Oh great idea, Erin Rachelle. Next time, maybe try to remember that you have an unsteady hand and SUCK at decorating.

How do you bitches make this look so easy?

I was standing over the oven, dragging a toothpick over these bastards, and GRUNTING. It was excruciating! You need precision for this shit. And precision and me? We’re not friends. We’re not even frenemies. In fact, if precision turned into a zombie, I’d push everyone out of the way so I could be the one to shoot it in the motherfucking head. Precision makes me cry, you guys. And I think I have arthritis now. I fucking hate you, too, spider webs.

I hate anything to do with baking! I hate frosting! I hate food coloring! I hate the kitchen! I hate Henry!

I do like licking the batter off that mixing contraption though.

The worst part is that I kept catching Henry trying not to laugh when my sanity was very clearly slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Of course, they looked nothing like Frankenstein and I had a failure-induced panic attack. Then I realized that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have a variety.

“What if the kids start fighting because they all want one with a marshmallow head?” I freaked out.

“It’ll be a good lesson for them. You don’t always get what you want in life,” Henry said matter-of-factly. That’s great, but I didn’t want to be there when parts of Mr. Potato Head began flying as the kids fought each other with tinker toys and glue sticks and teachers staggered away with pencils jutting out from their femoral artery. You might be wondering what sort of impression I have in my mind of preschool classes. Obviously a very Mad Max, post-apocalyptic one.

It was nearly 1:00am by the time we finished decorating the fuckcakes. Henry and I slept in separate rooms.

FUCKERS!!!!

[Ed.Note: Henry can attest this is not an accurate account. It has been toned down. A lot.]

Sep 222009
 

It was 11:30 PM. I knew it was a bad idea. Henry REALLY knew it was a bad idea. But there was a box of corn bread mix in the kitchen and I really wanted corn bread. Of course Henry was all, “Pendants or muffins, I can’t do both.” So I had the bright idea of baking that shit on my own while Henry toiled over resin at the dining room table.

The thing with Henry is that he acts like he’s whatever.

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Like, “Yeah go ahead, you do that; see if I care” but I KNOW that it KILLS him to hear me smashing shit around in the kitchen when there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. And then I had to ask him if vegetable oil and canola were the same and I could tell he wanted to march in, reclaim his kitchen, and whip up his own batch of delicate muffins from one of the yellowed index cards he keeps in a prized recipe box. But instead, he maintained a calm facade and continued making pendants while I raped and foraged the kitchen cabinets, scraped the top of my hand on a blender blade, and tried with little success to defend my eyeballs from imminent recipe-induced crossing. Recipes are only word problems in disguise, those fuckers.

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After a lot of groaning, grunting, and “motherfuck”ing, I finally had all of my shitty batter (which unlike cake batter, does NOT taste good raw) doled out in what I hoped to be even allotments.

I was wrong.

fuckingmuffins

Oh but don’t worry, the nasty taste of the muffins completely overrode the size discrepancies. Not even the hearty fistfuls of sugar I dumped on top, pre-baking, could mask the bland dryness of these assholes. Henry even slid his plate away with more than half a muffin remaining. And he opted for the runt of the batch to begin with.

This morning, I decided to mix up some honey butter to help combat the dryness and add some sweetness.

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I mean, I fucking DRENCHED these bastards in the shit and they were still nothing more than glorified Southern saliva-suckers. Chooch, bless his heart, he tried to eat half of one, but in the end he decided to be honest and said, “I can’t like these. They’re not delicious.”

Fuck baking. Though I am still determined to bake a pie this weekend. And I think I have just the recipe.

Jul 282009
 

Last week, I opened my front door to find a gigantic box from Williams-Sonoma perched at my step. First I panicked, because I knew I hadn’t consciously ordered anything from there and my grandma went through this phase where she was ordering shit from QVC in her sleep and what if that was happening to me now too? All of my family’s best idiosyncrasies, consistently delivered to me on the conveyor belt of heritage.

After hauling it inside, I was overjoyed to find, swimming near the top of the inflatable padding, a card that learned me it was an early birthday present from my friend Alyson. Two boxes were beneath all that, wrapped in pretty pineapple paper. THIS IS THE PART WHERE I LEARNED ALYSON BOUGHT ME TWO CANISTERS OF SPRINKLES CUPCAKE MIX WTF OMG!

sprinkles2

(My tutu was still downstairs from the Blogathon bullshit, so I put it to work. It needs to earn its keep somehow.)

Seriously, what a fabulous gift for a cupcake snob the likes of myself. In the enclosed card, she specified that perhaps Henry could bake those fine ass bitches up during Blogathon and I thought, “Why, what a swell idea! Something delicious to feast upon while beating myself stupid in the name of charity, and also – fodder to blog about!”

Henry was gone most of the day last Saturday, partially under the guise of “doing me a favor” by keeping Chooch out of my hair, but I’m sure it was mostly because Henry is scared to be around me during Blogathon. And also because I had a ton of pictures I needed him to pose for and he wanted to prolong the inevitable for as long as possible.

When he WAS home, I hounded him. “What about the cupcakes? How about those cupcakes? It’s cupcake o’clock, you motherfucker, let’s go before I blow up your asshole with a stick of dynamite.” And each time, he would say those words that every child and Erin HATE: “In a little while.”

And then it was midnight and he was standing before me giving me some lame ass excuse about not having any butter in the house and Blake was all, “I’ll go down the street to the gas station—” at which point Henry made a threatening throat-slicing motion.

Perhaps he felt bad that I only slept for 4 hours after being up for 24, and I even weed-wacked that afternoon (can you IMAGINE), because the next day he actually made the vanilla batch without any whining and begging from me.

Of Sprinkles, I will say this:

  • The cake part was very MOIST (why do people hate that word? I love it. In fact, I’ve often considered it tattooed inside my lip) and sweet. I think Henry might have baked it too long because he is not as delightful with baked goods as he’d like The Internet to believe (he’s a really great cook though, I can’t deny that), and the edges were a bit crisp.
  • Henry does, however, make a bitchin’ frosting. But he wanted to try the recipe that Sprinkles provided, which was very delicious but entirely too sweet for more than a few finger-sweeps while it was still in the mixing bowl. It ended up, in my opinion, being too much once it was sexin’ the cupcake and my teeth screamed a little.
  • The signature candy bulls eye toppers they supply have no taste and I really wanted them to spark in my mouth like Necco wafers are supposed to but never did when I tried. I learned that when I was in elementary school, from one of the issues of Weekly Reader. I also learned that if one is unable to brush their teeth, eating a piece of cheese before bed is an adequate substitute. That’s why I always guiltlessly devour cheese before bed, even though I know I’ll be brushing my teeth. That is also why I’m 569 pounds. That is also why sometimes a cube of Monterrey jack dislodges itself from my chin rolls the next day and I think, “Shucks, where’d that come from?”
  • My opinion will not be cemented until I try the red velvet canister (because that shit is the best ever, I mean who came up with red velvet? Some poor bitch, that’s who. Some poor serf-bitch who entered a fief-wide contest, vassals ineligible, to win an opportunity to bake the Queen’s pre-beheading cake and THAT is what she came up with over top her kettle with all the rats scurrying around and nipping at her gangrened toes, and immediately she named it after the fabric from which she pretended her burlap nightdress was made, and seeing as it was the only entry that didn’t cause a palace-wide botulism outbreak, she won) and then also visit one of the bakeries in person and even then, my ultimate opinion will be based on whether or not I see Katie Holmes gormandizing one with my own two eyes. I think I will also ask to shadow the bakers because I’m still not entirely convinced that Tom Cruise isn’t using Sprinkles as a front to contaminate the world with batter-planted religious Rufies. 
  • I will also need to try every flavor they make available to me. And that better be a wide selection, because don’t they know I’ll be slandering the shit out of them if I’m unhappy?
  • Please come  to Pittsburgh. I have a feeling I might really want to have sex with you if we meet in person.

sprinkles

Henry went to bed before the cupcakes cooled, so I was in charge of the frosting station. Of course, I didn’t wait long enough and then bitched when all the frosting shifted around the head of the cake and then began to run down the sides like a souvenir from sloppy sex. What? I didn’t bash in the left side of it from groping it with my heavy beast-hands! It came like that.

THANK YOU, ALYSON! For remembering my birthday, and being such an awesome friend. <3

Apr 142009
 

A few weeks ago, I sent out an urgent Tweet begging for advice on how to turn ordinary bread into delicious cookies. The general consensus was, “Honey,just  toast it and sprinkle it with sugar & cinnamon.” This was no good, no good at all. “Nice try,” I thought, “but that’s just TOAST and probably the fanciest thing my mother ever made me for breakfast. So no.”

I was thinking about it again earlier tonight, and,  feeling particularly ambitious, I exclaimed, “Hey, Chooch let me enter the kitchen and bake you up some cookies, child.” And he was like, “Hold on, I’m inviting viruses onto the computer.”

Let me break this down for you in Pretentious Food Blog-style, because I want to make sure everyone gets to experience this culinary delight.

  1. FIRST, get out some slices of bread and tear it a new asshole. I used some sort of Roman wheat bread bullshit.
  2. Pretend like you’re making boobs out of Play-Doh and roll your bread pieces up real good. You can leave the crust on; I did. For some.
  3. Next, think of things that taste real good and sweet to you. (Preferably things that are not a part of someone’s anatomy, because I’m not so sure that would bake well and I don’t know any cannibals IRL to call up for advice. Unless Jeffrey Dahmer had a cookbook?)
  4. Once you got some sugar plums dancing in your mind, rummage through the cabinets and see if you have that shit. In my case, I pulled out the SUGAR, CINNAMON and HONEY, what what. Do not overthink it with measuring apparati! JUST DUMP THAT CRAP IN A DIABETIC HEAP.
  5. Roll your yeasty ballsacks into it. And now, roll the bread, too. Knead the fuck out of it like it’s the new sexual black dress of 2009. If you have to, think of the last porno you watched. Just get it done.

After you scrape the excess with your fingers and do some deep-throating, the bowl might look like this:

31

Oh shit, and at some point you should do that pre-heating thing. I wasn’t sure what to set the oven to, so I just cranked it all the way up. Like fast food, bakery edition. I’m unsure what # to make that step, but I have faith that you will persevere. Or have your purse severed.

6. Splat the accessorized balls onto a COOKIE SHEET. I didn’t do anything to the COOKIE SHEET because I wasn’t sure if I should use butter, oil, or parchment paper, so we went bareback for this one.

It might look like this when you’re done with that:

51

7. While you’re doing this culinary miming, let your child graffiti a dining room chair with Jesus band-aids. It keeps him from accidentally Plath-ing himself  or adding things to your Etsy shopping cart, like a Santa’s Workshop wall-hanging.

jesus

8. Open the oven after two minutes to see how glorious and glistening your bonne bouche looks.(And yes, I called it that. Out loud. Coupled with kissing noises.)

9.  Panic because the cookie sheet is missing from the oven; figure it must have been the basement-dwelling vagrant who thieved it when you were wrenching the knife from your child; realize you never put the cookie sheet in to begin with.

10. Put the cookie sheet in the oven.

11. Take it back out three minutes later because you have no patience.

12. If  your teeth involuntarily twinge and ache just from the proximity, and it looks like the vagina of Jabba the Hut’s wife, they are baked.

jabbasvagina

13. Try to dislodge the confections from the cookie sheet; note that McGyver might want to add hot-ass honey into his superglue repertoire.

14. Do not be surprised when all of your hard work and ingenuity is summed up honestly by a three-year-old:

11

“This is not a cookie. This is toast. I can’t like that, dorkbitch.”

Apparently, Jesus I’m not. Though probably it would be better if I used different bread next time. And marshmallows. Why didn’t I add marshmallows.

 

Mar 122009
 

Since last weekend was all about cucpakes and game night, I find it apropos to repost an old LiveJournal post about the same subjects. And hopefully sometime Capn’ Cusspants will let Mommy have a fucking minute to sit down and write about the recent game night. If not, Doctor Nyquil might have to make an appearance. (KIDDING.)




Originally posted January 21, 2007

 Bathing in a tub of warmed pistachio pudding with buoyant sponge caked-rubber duckies.

Traipsing through a field of peanut butter-covered bubble wrap while Robert (or Elliott) Smith warbles love songs down golden rays of sunlight while perched on a nearby cloud.

Swimming in a chambord pie with lesbian mermaids.

These are the sensations I imagined would wash over me while I tackled the cupcakes last week. I did not feel any of these things. Instead, I felt tired, bored, agitated. All the things I normally feel when spending time with Henry.

First, he quickly talked me out of the “from scratch” mindset and set me free in the baking aisle of Giant Eagle, where I bought three boxes of cake mix and decorative thingies and neon food coloring. There was so much more I wanted to buy but I don’t know where to go to get the good baking stuff. I wanted to encrust my cakes with edible diamonds and sugared seaweed, but time was fleeting.

My cupcake-baking enthusiasm quickly waned as I struggled to mix the batter, but interest was regained when Henry took the blending-reins and set me free with a kitchen-full of ingredients to plop into each pocket. He lingered close-by, though, to make sure that everything I used was edible. Just because I had hoped to fill the innards with mud, grass, thumb tacks and soiled baby wipes, I guess. Henry was disgusted and even remarked that I have the audacity to wonder why I can’t keep friends. And here I thought it was because of my wicked mood swings and inability to trust!

Here is what I learned:

  • Cheerios shrivel and get very hard when baked
  • Fruit snacks don’t melt; they still stick to your teeth even after being baked into batter
  • Fistfuls of marshmallows should not be allowed inside a cupcake because then Henry has to use a knife to cut the finished product out of the pan. And then your guests think that one was nibbled on by your cats. And then you feel like shit because people think your house is unsanitary and they start holding cupcakes up to the light to inspect further.
  • Maraschino cherry sauce sinks and congeals at the bottom for a bloody good-looking finished product
  • Janna will eat her weight in cupcakes flavored with blueberry preserves, and won’t even notice that a well-concealed olive is awaiting her beneath a cap of green icing
  • Chopped dates blend into cake batter and come out the other end of the baking process undetected. Seriously, who ate the one with the dates? No one knows
  • When Henry urges me to only fill each baking cup halfway, I should listen

The next morning, Henry and I stood in the kitchen staring at two dozen un-iced cupcakes. We marveled over their non-uniformity and I grabbed the next box of mix.

“Whoa! Oh no. You are not making anymore. Are we looking at the same cupcakes here? You got two dozen disgusting cupcakes sitting here and let me tell you something: once your little friends find out what’s in them, ain’t no one going to be eating them. We don’t need any more cupcakes going to waste.”

I was enraged, yet relieved. Baking is tiring business, you guys. It’s not fun like it looks like on TV. I couldn’t even read the directions on my own. I tried, but words blended together and it started to look like a word problem which angered me because numbers just don’t belong in sentences with words because it makes my brain seize up a little. But I ate a lot (a lot) of batter and felt like it might have been my last day on earth.

So instead of boarding the baking train, we (read: Henry) whipped up some butter cream icing which was then separated into several bowls so I could get all Picasso with my food coloring.

“Just put like, two drops in,” Henry advised as I meat-fisted the small vial and sent at least fifteen droplets splattering into the icing.

We made purple (regular flavored), pink (amaretto), lime (almond), blue (marshmallow) and then I got bored and ditched Henry. He used this quiet time to concoct his own icing: bright green flavored with a hint of red pepper, which left a pleasant warmth in the mouth. It was my favorite, but none of the game night attendees noticed and had to be told what was happening. Sometimes I wonder if Janna’s mommy has to accompany her to the potty since Janna seems to need dialogue added to her every action.

“Now you’re passing a corn-studded turd through your anus. Here it comes! Plunk! That was the sound of it dropping into the toilet water! Now wipe yourself good, Janna. Front to back!”

Honestly. She probably didn’t notice the olive because I wasn’t giving her a play-by-play.

After I finished slathering my disfigured cupcakes, it was finally time to decorate them! Except that I didn’t give a shit anymore! I half-heartedly dusted each one with sprinkles and plopped a cherry on some of them. I was kind of over it. I mustered enough energy to impale two of them with toothpicks in order to create a two-story cupcake shanty.

It’s a shame really, because I had big plans of desecrating each iced dome with obscenities and unmentionables and maybe even using a piping bag to scrawl out some of Janna’s dirty secrets, but my belly ached from the fingerfuls of icing I had scooped out–behind Henry’s back–and jammed into the back of my throat like an orphan eating porridge. (I’ve been obsessed with porridge all weekend.)

I guess baking wasn’t the worst thing for me to find out I don’t mesh with. It could have been something dangerous, like knife-fighting. (Which isn’t to say that’s not a hobby I’ve flirted with in my head.)

For some reason, my guests actually ate all but five or six, forcing Henry to eat his words. There were several murmurings of “What is that sticking to my tooth?” but I really think that Henry’s delicious icing (ugh) overpowered my misuse of creative baking license.

Granted, two of my guests were stoned, but hey–I’ll take it.

Feb 262009
 

puzzle

As Week Two draws to a close, I have in my head a list of things I am thankful for.

  1. Wine
  2. Puzzles that occupy Chooch
  3. Ability to shut Chooch out when he starts whining in frustration over said puzzle
  4. iCarly, for being one of the few shows that can keep Chooch quiet for the entire episode
  5. Janna, who has babysat me numerous times while I in turn babysit Chooch
  6. CVS, for being in walking distance
  7. Wine
  8. That I don’t own a gun (thankfulness on this tip is debatable and changes by the hour)
  9. the convenient way tablespoons are marked on butter wrapper so idiots like me don’t have to panic
  10. Wine
  11. MTV reality shows
  12. “Annie”,

a. because I forgot how much I love to emulate the theatrical warbling of raggedy orphans

1 . and this in turn gives Chooch a taste of his own obnoxious-coated medicine

b. it keeps alive my dream that the sun really will come out tomorrow, and by that, I mean a rich man will adopt me and it will be all “Henry who?” and you will see me tapdancing into the sunset, my friends.

Did something amazing yesterday, I did. I made cornbread on my own, and I only had to text Henry once for help. I even added real life corn into the mix (which tastes real good, by the way, salmonella be damned) and then, oh you will never believe this, while it was baking in the oven (yes, I made sure all the extraneous cookware was cleared out first. I learned the hard way when I still lived at home and attempted to bake cookies while a bag of missed crackers still sat in the corner of the oven-turned-pantry) I even took it upon myself to mix my own HONEY BUTTER. When it was done, I swiped a finger through it and exclaimed, “I did that!

” which is the same thing Chooch says when he shits on the potty/Sharpies the wall/blows up the neighborhood with a homemade grenade.

And then of course, after all my slaving in the kitchen, Chooch was like, “Are you fucking kidding me, fool?

I ain’t eating that shit.” Even when I tried to say it was cake, he backed away in horror and said, “I can’t like that.” Even when I lied and said, “Daddy made it!” he was like, “Uh, no, YOU made it. I watched you, retard.”

When Henry came home last night, I begged him to try some. He kept giving me excuses like:

  • I’m not hungry
  • I’m allergic
  • I don’t like cornbread
  • Look, you’re missing the Real World, omg!

But finally he conceded.

“It’s good right?” I asked expectedly. “I even put real corn in it. It’s like an actual Mexican made it, Henry.”

He said it was decent.

“Although….”

“What?” he asked, cornbread mastication ceased in apprehension.

“Well, the expiration date was from a year ago. But that’s probably OK, right? I mean, it tasted fine to me.”

He quit eating it after that, but swears it was just because he was full.

Whatever. I used fresh milk and eggs, at least. Besides, it said it was a SUGGESTED date. My personal suggestion was to use it yesterday.

febchooch

“Joke’s on you, mommy-asshole.”

Feb 202009
 

Last night was relatively calm for the most part.

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I was able to get Chooch interested in “Annie,” but I don’t think he was listening to my story about how I tried to orchestrate a reproduction of it in eighth grade and Jason Jones was going to play Punjab, but then my ex-friend Keri couldn’t take it anymore and kept deep six-ing my cast list. I think that may have had something to do with the fact that every time she would sleep over, I’d put the soundtrack on repeat.

My love for Annie runs deep, like a stream of piss in Hell’s urinal.

I had him in bed by 10:30 (early for him, believe me) but then Henry had to come in the house like a fucking bumbling burglar and Chooch was all, “Huh? Daddy’s home?” and then it was stomp-stomp-stomp down the stairs, at which point his mild mood completely mutated into whirling dervish mode and he started throwing toys and spilling apple juice. And I took no part in it. I stared emotionlessly at the TV and mumbled, “He was fine all night.

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You  make him turn into an asshole. He’s all yours, have a ball, Daddy.”

I had scheduled a phone call with my new friend Jessi. When you’re raising a hellion, phone calls can no longer be fielded at whimsy. And it’s always fantastic when you have to tell people, “Don’t call me until after 11pm” because you know it’s going to sound like Oakland rioting in the house up until then. Fortunately, when Jessi called, Chooch and Henry had at least taken their screaming show upstairs, but the ruckus was still jarring enough that I had to strain  to concentrate on parts of the conversation. I could hear Henry shouting, “Get back in bed!” and Chooch answering from across the hall, “No way!” and then devilishy laughing and chucking what sounded like boulders out of his crib. Finally, it quieted down (apparently Chooch ended up falling asleep in our bed while I was still on the phone and Henry had no idea. We make a great parenting team) and I was able to enjoy a grown-up conversation with a really cool girl.

Today, I woke up and remembered, “Fuck, I promised I’d make French toast for breakfast.” I can’t remember why exactly I promised, what horrendous activity I was trying to bribe the child to quit, but I do know that he reacted well to the bribe and was, for the most part, a decent human being last night. And when I promise him things, I make sure to follow through because the last thing I want is to be like my own mother. (That song “Promises, Promises” by Naked Eyes? ALWAYS makes me think of her.)

So I google “easy french toast” and only 68798097 results turn up, oh lucky day. Quickly, I become confused. Every recipe is different. One says one egg and two slices of bread, another says 2 eggs and 6 slices of bread. I’m not even in the  kitchen yet and I’m in tears.

But I did it. Sort of. I mixed all the shit together and became mildly frustrated at the way the cinnamon melded into a curdled skin with the milk. I didn’t know exactly what “grease the pan” meant, because that was so vague.

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So I wiped it with canola oil. That didn’t seem greasy enough, so I sprayed it with Pam. Finally, I caved and plopped some fucking butter up in that shit and marveled at the sizzle.

The first piece, thank God I tried it before serving it to Chooch, because it was wack. Totally raw. The pieces that followed were not much better, but I felt confident that the eggs were no longer raw. One piece actually had a little scrambled egg hanging off it like a breakfast dingleberry. It was cute, but tasted absolutely disgusting.

I let Chooch and myself ingest several bites. But I noticed that there was something terribly off with them, so I said, “Er, maybe we should not eat anymore, Chooch.”

And then Henry came home. Scraps of evidence remained on both of our plates, and Henry asked, “Did you cook it enough?” as he held up a piece tentatively between two fingertips, like he was trying to spy the contents of his cheating wife’s mail.

“I’ll tell you right now what you did, you used too much milk.” He said it in that superior “I watch Alton Brown” tone that makes me want to castrate him sometimes, with an Alton Brown-approved cutlery set. But then, sniffing the kitchen, he added, “You caught it on fire, didn’t you?” And then, upon further inspection of my damning trail, he yelled, “Tell me you did NOT use this metal spatula on my non-stick pan!!!!??”

Later, after he was sure that Chooch and I weren’t going to need our stomachs pumped of swirling raw eggs, Henry tried to reason with me. After eight years, he still tries this sometime. It’s kind of adorable.

“You know, cooking’s not that hard. Your problem is that you rush. You want it done NOW.”

“Well, duh. Why else would there be the high setting on the stove, if not to help me cook things as fast as possible?” And Henry did this thing where he holds up to his hands in a silent prayer, like he’s telepathically asking some entity to please provide patience.

Finally, I snapped, “Look, cooking is not fun for me. I DO NOT LIKE IT. I do not get joy from rooting around the refrigerator for ingredients, I do not like the way my head feels when struggling to read a sentence that contains words AND numbers, and I absolutely do NOT enjoy standing in front of a stove wondering when this shit is going to be done.”

I don’t care if I suck at this. I do not like to cook, not here not now not then not there. And if it takes me writing it out Dr. Seuss-style to get it through his head, then I will gladly work on that shit this weekend. That is, after I bathe in a tub of vodka and have a harem cater to me. “That’s right, you drop that tab in mama’s mouth, just like that.”

Feb 162009
 

Something wonderful and terrible happened all at once: Henry got a second job. He starts today, at 3 and won’t be home until 11. This is awesome because hello, we need the money; but it’s tragic because it means I have to cook dinner for Chooch and myself EVERY NIGHT NOW.

I don’t know how to cook, remember? Not only that, but I don’t LIKE to cook.

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I told Henry, “Son, you better do like all those good working mommies do and start freezing some shit.” So last night, he toiled away over a big cauldron and before I knew it, the fridge was stocked with small plastic containers of soup. “This should get you through until at least Wednesday,” he said, and I could tell by the way his voice was strained that he’s worried about this too, like he’s going to come home one night and find Chooch and I in an emaciated heap by the corner, being pissed on by cats mistaking us for rugs.

“I’ll freeze some spaghetti sauce, too,” he said on second thought, coming back from whatever faraway vision of horror he was screening.

When he came home from his first job today, he was in the kitchen stocking up the salad bowl for me. I came up behind him, gave him a desperate hug and whispered, “It’s like, the end of an era.”

“WHAT era?” he asked. The era of home-cooked meals, Henry.

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The era of not having to touch the stove, ever.

Oh my shit, I’m going to miss that fucking man.

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I can make cheese sandwiches (not grilled cheeses, though; that’s one step up from the three-year-old skill level I currently maintain), sometimes pasta but that’s pretty inconsistent, mac n cheese but Henry worries about the nutritional value when I get “creative” with it, and scrambled eggs but Henry worries that I will poison Chooch. I feel like there’s something else I can make but I can’t think.

Basically:

  1. anything that can be cooked in the microwave
  2. anything that can be toasted
  3. anything that is ready to serve straight from a box
  4. anything that doesn’t require SLICING
  5. take out, though I’ve been known to fuck that up too on occasion

So, what I’m asking is for good, nutritionous and EASY (read: Erin-proof) recipes that I can confidently prepare for Chooch and myself. I don’t eat meat so I don’t know how to cook that shit. Please help.

And if anyone local feels like showing up on my doorstep with a crock pot full of vegetables, hope, and a grandmother’s love, I might be inclined to invite you in.

Jul 082008
 

I’m looking for awesome salads. I’ve been eating salads for lunch every single dingdong day since like, mother fucking piece of shit April, and I’m burnt out. BURNT THE FUCK OUT. I’m tired of alfalfa sprouts and garbanzo beans. The flax seed stays, though.

I need options. Something exotic, erotic and mind-bending. Something without meat products.

Tell me how you make your salads. Give me secret family recipes. Anything that involves vodka and porn is a plus.

Otherwise, I’ll fall back on cheese sandwiches and get all bloated.

Things I do not like in my salads:

  • beets
  • radishes
  • onions (sometimes those purple fuckers are ok)
  • tomatoes (unless they’re cut up all tiny)
  • carrots, unless they’re as shredded as the jeans on the collective ass of 1980s heavy metal
  • dressings that do not include oil and vinegar
  • broccoli
  • urine

I really like ingredients that are not only hard for Henry to procure, but also hard on his wallet. And then I’ll write up some reviews maybe and possibly become a salad expert and get to do some whoring on Food Network.

Mar 272008
 

Internet,

What’s your preferred method of stripping the shell from a hard boiled egg? Because I just lost thirty minutes of my very important life, hunched over the garbage can with two dyed Easter eggs squealing under my grip.

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By the time I finished, half of each egg came off with the shell, I have cuts under my nails, and my kitchen looks like a crime scene.

Also, there were tiny specks of shell hiding in my egg salad.

RUINED.

Mar 162008
 

Last week, I bought a box of some deliciously exotic-sounding coconut pudding/custard bullshit in the foreign food aisle at Giant Eagle. It’s called tembleque, I think.  I spent the better part of a week asking Henry, "Did you make it yet? That coconut bullshit, did you make it? Are you gonna? When?"

This morning, he was out doing some electrical work for his BFF Randy (read: he was hoping to lose his asshole innocence but Randy is a homophobe for real). When the Henry is away, the Erin will play…with things she knows nothing about.

The directions seemed simple: they were divided into two steps. Simple. It doesn’t take long to get to two, I thought.

A few minutes ago, I withdrew the bright pink cereal bowl I chose for the mold. The contents were runny and sloshed around the edges with little movement from me.

"It didn’t WORK," I cried from the kitchen.

"Maybe the bowl is too big?" Henry attempted to hypothesize. "Maybe pour into several smaller —" but I was already leaving the kitchen, hands thrown overhead.

Moments later, as I was sitting in the living room reading a book, he asked, "How long did you let this boil?" I didn’t like how he was standing at the foot of my chaise, mouth all contorted into a familiar expression — the one right before he unleashes the smug sneer of triumph that I know all too well.

I shrugged. "I don’t know…I didn’t know I had to boil it. I had it in the sauce pan but I just mixed it and then poured."

Henry shook his head. "What is with you and directions? You throw them aside and just do. Did you even read the box? I know you know how to read."

"So it’s ruined?" To be honest, I had kind of been over it since an hour after I stowed it in the fridge, because it was taking so long to set. I didn’t consider the possibility that it was my fault; I imagined it was just a very high maintenance dessert packaged in a modest box. Like myself.

"You could probably freeze it," Henry suggested, but I was already thinking about the box of flan that I bought at the same time as the coconut fuck-up.

It’s still in the kitchen, stewing all non-perishably in its package, daring  me.

Feb 262008
 

I did a really Big Girl thing today — I made my own dinner to take to work. It was a delightful entree consisting of two slices of fifty billion grain bread (jetted here directly from France; the cellophane bag promises that it’s straight from a hearty hearth and I believe it), one hearty slab of savory mozzarella, and a couple shreds (the slice kept ripping when I tried to peel it out of the deli bag) of the most ambrosial American cheese your tongue ever did molest. Picture all of this off-set by the tangiest helping of dijon-flavored soy-mayo ever to sink into those tiny pockets in bread.

It was then plated with lots of love and care in fine tupperware with a bright yellow banana to add some flair to the presentation.

When I finished, I took off my toppling chef’s hat and stood back to admire my work. I bet Bobby Flay does that too.

But halfway here I realized I left it on the dining room table. I keep texting and email Henry, begging him to bring it out to me, but he won’t reply. I was nice at first, but then I started in all caps (I WANT MY SANDWICH!) and now I’m threatening to hold the damn Girl Scout cookies I bought from one of the dayshit employees (FOR HENRY) hostage.

Collin, more Pro-Henry than ever, doesn’t seem to think Henry should risk his life driving my lost sandwich to me. Why, because it’s snowing a little?  "It’s just a sandwich," he chided. But it’s MY sandwich. I nearly gave myself callouses in its preparation. I might die if I don’t get to savor the amazing craftmanship that went into building that true artisan sandwich. I’m so upset that I’m chewing on my hair.

Why do I feel like Chooch is probably eating it right now?