Things The Kitchen Taught Me: Kitchen mishaps...and really good ribs.

Today started off with a trip to Walmart. I had initially planned on making enchiladas since our tortillas were drying out, but when I saw the slab of ribs on sale I could not resist. These babies looked beautiful and had a great fat to meat ratio. Thankfully, Zac did not stop me.

While Zac worked on his medical school applications all day I slaved over our memorial day meal. We had ribs, corn and sugar snap pea succotash, watermelon, rolls, and key lime pie, my favorite!
A couple mishaps arose though...
Mishap #1
I wanted to make the pie look pretty, but my pastry bag exploded on me while i was piping whip cream stars so I succumbed to the good old plop and spread method.

it went from pretty (as pretty as my extremely limited star piping skills could take me)

to major mid-pie explosion

to salvaged goodness

Mishap #2

There were initially going to be mashed potatoes but I completely massacred those. I added some butter and cream and they were a bit on the thick side, so I thought about it and saw that I had just a little bit of milk left and I just wanted room in my fridge so i dumped it all in the potatoes thinking it would absorb it and thicken...I ended up with potato soup...so I tried salvaging it by adding potatoes I heated in the microwave...didn't work. I looked frantically for some instant mash potatoes...except as I was looking through pantry a memory flashed through my head of when I told Zac I refused to have "fake" potato flakes in my kitchen. As a last resort, I opened a box of dehydrated potato au gratin (which had to have been leftover from Zac's college food pile)...needless to say it turned into a big mess. So I made some rice instead. (And since we are poor college students, I have to figure out how I am going to use the potatoes for dinner tomorrow).

Mishap #3

Super Tart lemonade. I like zing, but my meyer lemon lemonade was over the top sour...When I reviewed the recipe i had switched the water to lemon juice ratio! So...we had ginger ale instead, and I will fix the lemonade for tomorrow.

Mishap # 4...I only put one layer of foil the my pan I baked the ribs in so it was a nightmare to clean...which is why I just threw the pan away (good thing I bought them at the dollar store).
After the craziness we had dinner and it was delicious. The ribs were so good and the sauce I used to baste them in was great, except I can't remember half the things I put in it.

Before

After

I guess you could say apart from grocery shopping all I really did for the day was cook and eat. A dangerous and common combination since I am not taking classes and it happens almost everyday.

Bon Appétit

Here some pictures from the day of cooking, and eating.