Five Weird Things I Do in the Kitchen
(Other than pretending that a piece of celery is a phone.)
Considering that most people probably think I’m nuts anyway for starting a blog with the purpose of writing solely about brownies, I’d like to tell you about a few strange things that I do in the kitchen. If you do anything weird in the kitchen, comment below. It’s confession time!
1. I Taste My Batter
Ideally I do this with pasteurized eggs in the batter. But if I’m working with regular old salmonella-enhanced eggs, I taste it right before I add the eggs. That way, the only thing missing is eggs and flour. It always helps me tell if I’m on the right track for sugar, salt, chocolate, and spices.
2. I Pick Out Albumen
Albu-what? That’s right, I pick out albumen. Albumen is that little white stuff attached to the egg yolk. I don’t know why, but I always get the brownie with the baked albumen in it, which is white, chewy, and yuck. So I’ve gotten into the habit of removing the little buggers before I mix in the eggs. Obsessive compulsive, you say?
Have you read the rest of my blog?
3. I Wreck the Place
Sometimes I go on some other food blog and they have a photo posted of their recipe prep. The whisk will be at an artistic angle to the quart of organic milk, and a cheery fire crackles smugly in the background.
I hate them all! Just kidding. Smiles and hugs all around…
Let me walk you through this. If I haven’t spilled batter on the sink, dropped the mixing spoon on the floor, let my toddler get hold of the (open) sugar bag, and then heaped the cooking garbage in 4 or 5 different piles across the counter, then it isn’t really cooking.
Is it?
4. I Enjoy Starting the Dishwasher
Now it’s your turn to call me some creative name.
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, yes, of course I hate doing the dishes. Dishes are nasty and repetitive and boring.
However.
When I get to that moment where the water from the running tap heats up…
And I reach into the maximum-security storage area of my little tabs of colorful detergent and unwrap it like a Wonka candy…
Then the lid goes snap and the door goes clunk and that whirring swooshing sound fills the air…
I feel weirdly happy. Sue me.
5. I Want to Eat Alone
Preferably with a nice book. A paper one, not one of those Kandles or whatever you call them. Evil, evil paper.
Don’t get me wrong. Nothing makes me more content than to sit down with my family at dinner, or my husband across a restaurant table on one of our monthly dates. But once a day I need a meal to myself, where I can sit quietly, take as much time as I want, and enjoy each taste of food with complete concentration.
I’ll never forget how much I cheered when Tina Fey’s character in “Date Night” shared her most secret fantasy: of sitting in a clean, lovely hotel room, all alone, eating a sandwich, with a soda.
God bless you, Tina Fey. You keep the rest of us sane.
The End… Or Is It?
If you want to make my day, leave a comment below about what you do in the kitchen.
Demetra
Thanks so much for sharing the behind the scenes happenings in your kitchen. I strain the albumen out of custards because they get tough when cooked, it makes sense to pick them out of your brownie batter too.
Katie
Thanks for stopping by. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one! ๐
BritishMumUSA
YES!!!!!! Never knew that about the egg, and I may have thrown up a little in my mouth now knowing that ๐ Thanks I think…..
Yes to those bastards that can make pretty pictures as they cook. If you notices I piled all of my stuff together and took pictures when making those white brownies and then cleaned after baking and took more pictures… DARN OCD!!!! Darn you!!!!
Oh the beautiful hypnotic sound of the dishwasher how sweet it is…
LUNCH girly, I do LUNCH ALONE!!!! Wednesdays and sometimes Sundays are my alone time to eat and it is a beautiful thing. I love what you do in your kitchen.
xoxoxo
Katie
Ah yes, lunch, beautiful lunch! In a very rare happening today, I got to run errands ALONE. Guess what I did? I stopped at Panera for a cup of broccoli cheese soup and a roll. Heaven!
I’m so glad someone understands about the dishwasher. ๐ Someday our paths will cross, and we’re gonna have coffee and laugh ourselves silly!
Bonnie Banters
I had a big chuckle reading your post! I think I recognize a couple of things about my cooking experiences here (I’m sure we all do)! Great post!
Katie
Thanks! And thank you for stopping by. ๐
Clare
I eat the cake mix, with a spoon, quite often lots of it……. after it s fully mixed. The thought of touching a raw eggs makes me ill. I also love my dish washer, but he makes unhappy grumbling sounds, when he see’s how much mess I have created for him, rather than a sexy clunk and swoosh. Plus he refuses to wash anything, as he calls it, ‘that is an odd shape’. Eating alone!!!!!!!!!!!! Does such a thing truly exist?
Katie
Your dishwasher sounds like my previous dishwasher. It would often make such a loud clunking noise that I would run into the kitchen to see what had fallen off a shelf, but no- it was just the world’s noisiest dishwasher!
Eating alone is a rare beast, possibly a mythical one. ๐