{"id":4600,"date":"2009-11-05T11:19:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T17:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2009-11-05T11:22:20","modified_gmt":"2009-11-05T17:22:20","slug":"amymac-cooking-mishaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/2009\/11\/05\/amymac-cooking-mishaps\/","title":{"rendered":"What Martha and her friends left out&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/2009\/11\/05\/martha-cooking-mishaps\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4601\" style=\"border: 3px solid black; margin: 10px;\" title=\"bad cook\" src=\"http:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/bad-cook.jpg\" alt=\"bad cook\" width=\"136\" height=\"151\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/bad-cook.jpg 374w, https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/bad-cook-269x300.jpg 269w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 136px) 100vw, 136px\" \/><\/a>Anyone following my tweets this week knows that I&#8217;ve spent much more time than usual in the kitchen.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s no secret that I&#8217;m not a good cook.\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have the time, patience or the attention span to be successful as a cook and I&#8217;m fine with it.\u00c2\u00a0 However, sometimes I have a burst of motivation to get ahead with meals, try a new recipe or experiment for the show.\u00c2\u00a0 This week was one of those weeks and I spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon making 3 soups &#8211; vegetable, chili and chicken with wild rice &#8211; so we could freeze some for later and enjoy this week.<\/p>\n<p>Let me be the one to lift that Hollywood production veil for you&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Foreshadowing &#8211; Explosions<\/strong><br \/>\nShould&#8217;ve known it would be a rough day when on the way home from the grocery store, my milk exploded in the back, then my sparkling water exploded all over me at lunch.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Incident #1 &#8211; Miscommunication <\/strong><br \/>\nI read in Better Homes and Garden magazine that you can put soups in storage bags and then lay on a cookie sheet to freeze.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you can store them flat and upright.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought this was brilliant so I tried it.<br \/>\n<strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>FAIL.<\/strong> Either the soup was still too warm or too heavy because it bust right through the bag!\u00c2\u00a0 I cleaned it up and used tupperware.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Incident #2 &#8211; Equipment Failure<\/strong><br \/>\nChris always asks for pot roast but I have no idea how to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried it yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 I seared it on all sides (thank you Gordon Ramsay) then put it in the slow cooker for 6 hours with grilled onions and chicken broth.\u00c2\u00a0 I checked on it a couple of times and noticed that it wasn&#8217;t very warm.\u00c2\u00a0 I switched made sure it was on, plugged it and even switched outlets to troubleshoot.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>FAIL.<\/strong> At the end of 6 hours, it was still lukewarm, uncooked and Chris spent 5 hours cooking it on the stovetop last night.\u00c2\u00a0 We had cereal for dinner. The slow cooker, which made soup on Monday, has been labeled broken.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Unseen &#8211; Other things cooking shows and magazines don&#8217;t tell you or show you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Chop Time<\/strong><br \/>\nI had no idea how long it took to chop vegetables for these soups.\u00c2\u00a0 I cut, sliced and diced for an eternity!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Clean Up<\/strong><br \/>\nI have never seen any &#8216;after&#8217; pictures or watched Martha do dishes.\u00c2\u00a0 My kitchen was destroyed and took an hour and 2 dishwasher loads to return to normal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lessons<\/strong><br \/>\nLive, learn and accept that you don&#8217;t have a team of people and experts to help you.<\/p>\n<p>Always plan on prep and clean up time.<\/p>\n<p>Check your equipment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Overall<\/strong><br \/>\nMy soups turned out awesome and we will enjoy them for the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"easy healthy recipes\" href=\"http:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/category\/recipes\/\">Amy Mac Easy Healthy Recipes<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone following my tweets this week knows that I&#8217;ve spent much more time than usual in the kitchen.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s no secret that I&#8217;m not a good cook.\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have the time, patience or the attention span to be successful as a cook and I&#8217;m fine with it.\u00c2\u00a0 However, sometimes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,73,103,677,676,23,43,675,419,8,678,679,41,21],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-amy-mac","tag-calories","tag-cooking","tag-cooking-disasters","tag-cooking-lessons","tag-fit-life","tag-food","tag-food-prep","tag-frozen-foods","tag-health","tag-kitchen-lessons","tag-tv-cooking-shows","tag-weightloss","tag-withamymac"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.withamymac.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}