Some while has passed since I had a cooking disaster of note (knock on wood regarding the two banana breads currently baking), but in a great twist of cosmic fate, my kitchen deficiencies seem to have transferred them to one of the other householdy chores I despise:
I can’t. bloody. grocery shop.
I’m fairly certain that not all my loathing stems from the fact that I am a recluse and the tantalizing thought that if only I didn’t have to go grocery shopping, I would only have to leave the house once a week, for church on Saturday evenings. A lot of it, I am sure, is the byproduct of my hatred of cooking; spending an hour or so trudging through Wal-Mart thinking about everything I’m going to cook for the next week, stresses me out.
Of course, that’s operating under the assumption that I only need to make one trip for groceries. In the past five days, for example, I have gone to Wal-Mart or Albertson’s a grand total of five times.
The first, Saturday, was supposed to be the only time. I bribed Mr. Burt with a forty-four minute back scratch and the promise to watch Hellboy with him (I suffered through less than an hour of it before I told him I was too sleepy and found it too stupid to finish it, and he still hasn’t gotten more than a five minute back scratch) if only he would go with me to the nice Plano Wal-Mart with me after church. But as if the universe were seeking to pay me back for not holding up my end of the bargains with Mr. Burt, the nice Plano Wal-Mart was out of cucumbers, single yellow onions, Ragu 7 Herb Tomato pasta sauce, and pizza sauce, which meant I had to go on Sunday afternoon as I needed the onion to make a pot roast.
If only I had realized, before I made my second grocery run, that I didn’t have enough soy sauce for my pot roast gravy! My kitchen counters strewn with browned rump roast, peeled and sliced carrots, potatoes, and of course onions, and a bowl full of a soy sauce, chili powder, and corn starch mixture for my gravy which was way short on soy sauce, I was forced to run out for the third time in less than twenty-four hours for soy sauce.
That night, I realized we only had three toilet paper rolls to get through the week.
Monday, we ran out of kleenexes in the master bathroom, and only had a few left in the downstairs half-bath.
Tuesday, our milk jug indicated it would not last the week.
Today, smelling faintly rotten bananas while I worked, I plotted to spend my afternoon baking banana bread, only to realize I didn’t have pecans. For a short time, I contemplated bundling up in scarf, gloves, and coat and hiking up to Albertson’s for the pecans so I could do so. In the end I didn’t, as I would have to go out for a fifth time later, for said paper products (which now included paper towels, as I used the last to clean the master bathroom this afternoon), milk, soap, dishwasher detergent, and AA batteries, and five trips to the grocery store in five days would just be stupid. Not that four wasn’t pretty darn close.
Also, it didn’t get out of the 30s today.
By now you know that something happened between my fourth grocery store trip and the baking of the banana bread to take me out for my fifth trip of the week. (Ironically, I’d joked to Mr. Burt before trip number four that I might as well do my full week’s grocery shopping at Wal-Mart since I was bound to need something later on in the week.)
It was like Sunday’s roast all over again. There I was, surrounded by a sink full of used measuring cups, mixing bowls, and utensils, about to add the baking powder to my banana bread batter, when I discovered that I didn’t have enough baking powder.
I screamed.
Mr. Burt didn’t hear it, as he was playing computer games with his head phones on.
Desperate not to go out again at 9 PM, I went to my computer and launched Firefox to google “baking powder substitutions.” Apparently you can mix baking soda and cream of tartar in lieu of baking powder, but that didn’t help me since I would have to go to the grocery store for cream of tartar. And baking soda, now I think of it…So, rather than throw out five cups of flower, two coups of sugar, a cup and a half of milk, five bananas, two eggs, and quite a bit of vegetable oil, I re-bundled up and drove to Albertson’s for my baking powder.
Now, before I conclude this sad tale, you should know that not only am I afflicted with not getting everything I need at the grocery store, but also with the exact opposite problem. I’m constantly thinking I need things, buying them, and getting home only to realize I didn’t need them at all. Tuesday I reorganized my pantry, and discovered that I had somehow accumulated two bottles of vegetable oil, three cans of cooking spray, and three quite large bottles of dried parsley to refill the jar in my spice rack.
The cooking spray came in handy when it was time to grease and flour my loaf pans and found that my shortening had taken on a greenish hue, smelled off, and had the consistency of rubber cement.
Since I began writing this post, the banana breads have come out of the oven, golden brown and smelling perfect, and they slid out of the loaf pans even though I wasn’t able to grease and flour them.
But when it came time to put one in the freezer to store for next week or later, I found that I am clean out of Ziploc freezer bags.
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