Dragonflies, Butterflies & Lady Bugs

How Not to Cook Dinner, or, Be Sure to Read Carefully

Day before yesterday, we were waiting in line at the grocery store and "Cooking Light" magazine caught my eye. There was a recipe for french onion soup that looked good, so I bought a copy and brought it home. Paging through, I noticed some excellent recipes for chicken, some of which I already had ingredients for (or so I thought), so I planned the next night's dinner from one of them (this would be last night's dinner).

I'm cooking up my cider bacon chicken, amazed at how easy the recipe is, congratulating myself on having all the ingredients on hand... then I dumped in the chicken broth and apple cider vinegar for the sauce. And promptly grabbed a napkin for my watering eyes. "It'll get better," I thought, "When it cooks down." Gabrielle immediately started complaining loudly and obnoxiously about the smell. Silently I agreed with her, but all the noise she was making about it quickly got on my nerves.

So there I was, stirring my stinky sauce, Gab caterwauling in the background about the horrible smell, Jeff trying to shut her up because he could see my shoulders starting to by-pass my chin, wafting through the steam whistling out my ears... and it occurred to me to check the recipe. Guess what I found? The apple cider vinegar (which was, of course, the source of the eye-watering pungent-ness) was supposed to be simply... apple cider. Woo, what a difference some vinegar makes! Into the garbage disposal with the sauce, which fortunately was made separately from the chicken.

The smell is still lingering this morning.

The lesson? Don't skim recipes, folks. Read them carefully. And if it smells really bad, re-read them. Or better yet, have your complaining nine-year-old read it for you. ::sigh::

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