Cook Monkeys

Does anyone think it’s weird to watch your food bake in the oven?

This is cross-posted from my personal site.

One year ago, the Boyer family had a Thanksgiving dinner. Everything was wonderful, my sister and her boyfriend were setting up a fire in the fireplace, we were in the kitchen watching or participating in carving the turkey, food was already on the table in the living room. Everything was fine.

Except, in all of the hustle, the flue was never opened. For those of you not familiar with fireplace design, the flue provides an escape route for heat, ash, and smoke; it also provides for an updraft that feeds the fire a bit. Soon there was smoke filling the living room, the smoke detector was going crazy, someone had to reach into the fireplace with the fire still rolling (with gloves on, of course) and open the flue. We had windows and doors open, smoke billowing out into the clear, cold air. There was a fan running all during dinner and the most delightful smell resembling a log cabin in the air.

We all assumed that this would never in a million years happen again. We joked about that this year: “Who gets to take the picture of the smoke this year?” We made it all the way to the end of preparation with no accidents. All the food was on the table, the only thing left was for the marshmallows to be toasted on top of the candied sweet potatoes under the broiler. Thirty seconds to a minute tops in the oven and they’d be ready to go.

Hustle and bustle created a distracting moment and my mother was called away to the other room for something. Soon after, my sister’s boyfriend remarked, “It sure does smell a lot like marshmallows in there.”

“Oh, sh*t!” exclaimed my mother as she dashed to the kitchen, only to open the stove and have a plume of smoke pour out. Those marshmallows sure were toasted.

She peeled off the black char layer to discover that only the top halves of the marshmallows were burned, whereas the other sides had melted into the syrup. Not wanting to ruin the texture of the dish, my mom added a new layer of white sugary cylindars to the surface and baked for thirty seconds. Twice the sugary goodness, and only a small puff of smoke.

Ultimately a winning combination in my mind.

No, I don’t mean Chinese people. I mean Chinese food.

Steps for cooking Chinese food:

1. Call mom
2. Have mom send food things
3. Have mom send cookbook
4. Call mom on how to cook this stuff
5. Page through cookbook
6. Pick something with a nice picture
7. Close cookbook and set aside
8. Make up the recipe with what you have
9. Serve to unsuspecting roommates for potential food poisoning
10. Impress girls with your 1337 c00king skillz0rz

Okay, guys. Here’s your link for tonight (in the name of science and cooking): Practical Applications of the Philosopher’s stone. For drunks.

Today, R.B. and I made pizza for everyone. After a trip to the supermarket, R.B. started making the dough from four “just add water” packets. He threw in some seasonings and let the dough rise under a towel on the stovetop.

For the sauce, we used a number 10 can of tomato sauce that R.B’s dad had given us for free and added italian seasoning, salt, black pepper, and garlic powder to it. He then had the brilliant idea to use some of the liquid oregano. Apparently liquid oregano is really concentrated stuff—like everything else his dad gives us—so when he added a portion of a teaspoon to six cups of sauce it went from tasting like tomato sauce to tasting like chunky oregano sauce. Yuck. He had to cut it so heavily with plain tomato sauce that there was almost no unmolested sauce left over.

Next on the list was spreading the dough on the pizza pans and applying sauce and letting it bake a bit to stiffen up the crust. Meat, bake, veggies, bake, cheese, bake, cool, cut. Everyone in the house had their own half a pizza with their own toppings. That pizza was pretty filling. I almost didn’t have to eat anything for a week (seriously).

One other thing: this is our first post from our Flickr account. There is a link on the sidebar called “Photos” if you haven’t noticed recently. We’ll be posting all of our pictures there to cut down on webspace and bandwidth issues on R.B.’s server account.