Lesson Learned

Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for all our blessings, including a home that provides me shelter from the elements. When we moved from Buffalo, we moved from a two story house with a full basement, 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 full kitchens and a two car garage. We now live in a  12 foot by 60 foot trailer. When we left Buffalo we sold or gave away 80% of our belongings. We brought only what we could jam into a 17 foot trailer.

Life in a small trailor can get cramped, especially if you like to play in the kitchen and use all kinds of dishes while cooking. Every time you want to do something you have to move a couple of things to get to what you are looking for---I am sure it would look like a chaotic dance to someone watching me, hmmm, or maybe a comedy.

I have been unemployed since our move to Canada, due to my non resident status. So what do i do with my time? I have three callings at church; Visiting Teacher, Relief Society Board Member, and Primary Teacher (9 and 10 year olds--good group of kids). I also do volunteer work in Lethbridge; Quilts for Canada Society, LDS Employment Center, and YWCA Woman's Shelter.

Along with these activities, I am attempting to become more domesticated. I mean doing more house work---yuck!!! The best part of house work is that I get to cook and bake. Today's adventures in the kitchen started to a very full sink of dishes, a hungry husband and I was hungry too.

The menu consisted of poached eggs and home fries. I have mastered the poached egg but not the cleaning out the pan afterwards. This time remnants of egg stuck to the bottom and sides of the pan---I couldn't get them off for the life of me. I tried every thing that we had--finally what worked was using my finger nails---yuck, no wonder I don't like house work.

A couple of nights ago I boiled some potatoes to use the next day in a potatoe salad that didn't get made. So this morning I remembered the boiled potatoes sitting in the refrigerator. Yummy, yummy!!! They made perfect home fries, nice and brown and crisp. The best part of this dish was that my husband really enjoyed it.

So like every day I washed the night befores dishes and this morning dishes after Dan left for work. Today was the big day that I would choose with Dan's help what dish I would make and bring to the "get to know you", relief society activity. This would be my first RS activity since we moved to our new community so it was pretty important to me to make a good impression. In my mind I had to make some thing that would be one of a kind and taste so fabulous that every one would be impressed with my cooking prowess. It was also the first time I would be meeting the sister in charge of the  of RS board which I'm a part of---no stress at all.

Remember rule one to "fascinating womanhood"(I haven't actually read the whole book) 1- always look impeckably beautiful. 2 - cook so well that every one wants a copy of your recipe.

So Tuesday was spent thumbing through cook books that have beautiful pictures of food that any and every one would druel over. I still needed to choose "the ONE". I finally found the recipe---oh yeah, peach strudel coffee cake. I would bake it in a glass pan to really show case the beauty of the master piece.

My mom used to tell me that "baking is like a chemistry lab and if you follow the directions of the recipe and place every thing in the right propotions than every thing should work out." She really stressed that cakes were one of those very difficult recipes where you needed to adhear to exact measurements. Today I decided to be creative and make the recipe mine, not just the cookbooks authors---what would they say at the activity'.....hmmmmm----in my imaginiation "oh you're so creative." "Hmmm, oh my heck this is ambrosia" "You re-invented this recipe---boy I wish I was that creative, sigh" "Oh please can you give me the recipe"

So off I went with an idea in my head. Change the white flour to half wheat and half corn meal---oh yeah. Than instead of using 2 fresh, firm peaches use two of the ones that I recently froze---oh yeah than I could really look domestic. So what happened?

When peaches thaw they are a bit, should I say soggy? Well the recipe was supposed to be done in 45 minutes in the oven. It took over 1 hour and 30 min when I finally gave up and took the pan out of the oven, knowing fully well that it wasn't fully cooked and would never be fully cooked, in my life time without causing a fire of some sort.

In the end I decided to make muffins--doughnut muffins--very simple, but they would have to do, hey my husband likes them so if no one liked them at the RS activity at least I knew they would be eaten at home.

Lesson learned---listen to mom, don't try to change a recipe that is supposed to be a cake, well it's ok to change a couple of ingredients I guess---maybe it wasn't a lesson that I learned after all---more adventures to follow and the recipe that I finally settled on.