A STORY ABOUT COOKING

As the title suggests, this is a story about cooking. But it is also a story about fiascos. Unfortunately, the two are typically intertwined where I am concerned.

I wish I had thought to take pictures of the things I am about to share. Alas, things were a bit frenzied and I did not have the presence of mind to do so. But on with our story.

I decided to cook. I know! What a feat! What an adventure! I thought that crock potting might be a good idea because it is supposed to be quick and easy.

NOTE: nothing about cooking is quick and easy.

So I borrowed a crock pot and I found a recipe that looked Deee-licious. Potato soup, as it were. Here is the very picture that seduced me into making this meal:

Doesn't that look just absolutely wonderful to you? It did to me too.
Source

So I had the recipe, I had the ingredients, I had the crock pot. And after a few days, I finally had the time (mind you, I didn't set aside MUCH time because crock potting is quick, right?)

The morning came around and I woke up early, ready to throw ingredients in this pot and come home from work to a meal. Things took a little bit longer than expected.

Read: instead of fifteen minutes, I spent an HOUR throwing ingredients into that stupid pot. It takes far longer to peel and cut 7 potatoes than you might think.

However, I wasn't too upset about the extra morning prep...until I read that there was also evening prep. What kind of recipe is this? I wondered to myself. Surely this is not what people mean when they say that crock potting is quick and easy.

SOOOO I came home and did the evening prep. It also took longer than expected (45 min instead of 10). And I had to let the soup sit for an extra 45 minutes because the potatoes weren't soft enough. By this point I had determined that I would not be making this recipe again, but it was good practice and surely the soup would be good.

The soup WAS good. I was pretty proud of myself.

I wish that was the end of my story.

Making this soup created more of a mess than I had anticipated, but that was fine with me. I'm a pretty good mess-cleaner-upper when I dive into it. I started wiping all of the spoons and measuring devices and scrubbing the various pots, running them all under the sink. The sink started to fill, so I ran the garbage disposal. And something horrifying happened: the water didn't go down. I furiously started running more water, taking all the dishes out of the sink, flipping the garbage disposal on and off like a madwoman, thinking THIS WILL GO DOWN. It didn't go down.

My roommate looked at it and determined that something must be clogging the sink. I had a terrible thought that I squelched, and I proclaimed that I didn't know what could possibly be clogging the sink. So we fiddled with it some more and nothing went down and I knew I had to 'fess up.

In a side-thought sort of voice I mentioned (as if it had just occurred to me) "Well I did peel seven potatoes into the sink this morning." My roommate stopped fiddling and looked at me. "Well that's what it is," she said. And promptly this sink was both my fault and my problem. I started freaking out.

I should say first that I had no idea you shouldn't flush your potato peelings down the garbage disposal, but after some googling I quickly determined that you shouldn't do this thing and what kind of imbecile didn't already know that???

Feeling stupid, I found company online. Apparently MANY people have found themselves in my exact predicament. Everyone swore by the baking soda-vinegar-&-boiled water trick, wherein you pour all of those things down your sink and some sort of chemical reaction happens and it eats all your potato peelings and your sink works again. This sounded simple enough, so my dear friend Ashley drove my frantic self to the store and we bought a big bottle of vinegar for 98 cents and we skedaddled back to my broken sink.

Unfortunately, this trick didn't work for me. It's a little complicated and I won't explain why it didn't work here, but it had to do with the pipes and where the clog happened.

And so I had this sink full of gross potato water that wouldn't flush down and I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out what to do. As a last resort I went to my building manager, but he was not there in my time of crisis and I started to lose my sanity. I did not want to be responsible for this anymore, and I also did not want to have to hire a plumber.

As I googled and googled some more, one more trick kept popping up: use a plunger. I shied away from it, even as I knew it was a very good idea. That's so gross I thought to myself. My roommates would never forgive me. But I also thought It could work. No one would have to know. Still, I wouldn't let myself do it.

But then I decided what the hay?!  I am the only one working to fix this problem and so I WENT FOR IT. And you know what? It worked.

OBVIOUSLY I bleached and scoured the sink. Ashley and my roommate both found out and were disgusted, but they got over it. And I came out feeling like WONDERWOMAN. I fixed my sink without crying, calling my dad, or asking a male for help. Take that!

The moral of this story is that I can do hard things and also I will probably never attempt to cook again.

~the end~

A COLLAGE ABOUT SUMMER

Here is what I am feeling right now.

Why does the summer slip by like a fish through your fingers, while winter slowly slumps along?

Anyway, right now I want s'mores by a campfire (and someone to cuddle close to, pretty please) and picnics in a park and hikes in Europe and a boardwalk by the beach and a book in a hammock and oh yes some ice cream with chocolate and sprinkles. 

I do not think this is too much to ask for. 

ABOUT A BASEBALL GAME

Last night our bishopric got each of us tickets to the Bee's game in Salt Lake. Originally I was not so excited about going to this game. (Confession: I didn't actually even know who/what the "Bees" were). About a week later, I found out that the Bees is actually the Salt Lake minor league baseball team and that the Bishop was paying for everyone to attend. I also found out that we would each get a free hot dog at this baseball game, and I was sold. I very much wanted to eat a hot dog at a baseball game in the summer. (You see, this seemed like a very American thing to do, and having spent a month outside of the country, I felt compelled to get back to my American roots).

So I committed. I was excited. I was going to be a participant in a ward activity--which just so happened to be one of my Summer Goals.

But then Monday afternoon rolled around and I had gotten to bed late the night before and I had worked a full 8 hours and I was tired. I came home and crawled into my bed hoping that I would feel rested in time for the baseball game (hint: this is never a good idea. Your blood turns to sludge when you lie in your bed, and all you want to do is watch Netflix and fall asleep. This is exactly what happened to me.) 

Luckily, my dear roommate Lauren was stalwart and pushed through her own post-work-on-a-Monday sleepiness. She convinced me that the game was a good idea and I half-heartedly slid out from under my covers and got dressed. Obviously I wore a baseball cap because what are baseball caps for except to be worn at baseball games?  

Lauren and I were very lucky and rode up with a few girls from the ward, one of whom owns a Jeep with AC that doesn't work, and another who is a very good dj. This made for a lovely combination of speeding down the highway with the windows rolled down, wind blowing through our hair, and music blasting the entire way up to Salt Lake. This made me feel very at-one-with-summer and also American (a key reason that I came on this venture, remember). 

We got to the stadium and none of us had cash so we could not park in the lot that asked you to pay $6 cash. We tried for the lot that asked you to pay $6 cash-or-card, thinking it was probably full but worth a shot. But wonder of wonders! The lot had one lucky parking spot left AND there was no one in the booth to take our money. This, my friends, is what my mother meant when she told me that you are blessed for attending FHE. Blessings abounded in the form of free parking. 

I don't have much to say about the game except that I didn't understand what was going on, and when people shouted "BALL!" and tried to catch it from the stadium I covered my head because I thought it was going to hit me. But the weather and the people were all lovely and the sky turned pink so this outing was well-worth getting out of my bed to come.

I ate my hot dog that tasted far better than it had any right to, and drank a whole cup of mediocre Root Beer (Barges, not A&W). I listened to people chat and I  tried to act like I wasn't completely stupid about sports and I watched the people on the grass lawn, remembering picnics at the baseball park with my own family when I was little. I felt American and even a little nostalgic. 

Overall it was a very successful evening and I fell in love with this summer. I'm making dandelion wishes that the rest of my summer days are so pleasant.

IT'S SUMMER

Maybe my last summer, at least as a single person in school. Next summer means graduation and NCLEX and finding a job. I can feel these upcoming responsibilities looming behind my shoulder and in the periphery of my vision, and it's FREAKING ME OUT.

The finalness of this summer is making me feel wimpy and out of control. Each day is slipping through my fingers like sand in an hourglass. And not a big hourglass--no, it's the hourglass that comes in your Boggle box and is finished in 2.5 minutes.

So I'm trying to do everything right this summer. I'm trying to get my bearings and then I'm planning to attack each day like I'm a bear fighting with another bear for the last fish in the stream. That may seem a bit dramatic, but I assure you it is not. It's just practical, because if I don't approach it with that kind of enthusiasm I'll drift through the summer and wake up on August 31 with regrets and a bad sleep schedule.

So here are some THINGS I'M GOING TO DO (not goals because I never actually get those done):

Float down Provo river

Clean out my stuff!!!!

Bike out to Utah Lake

Hike a lotsa (details TBA)

Eat a kolache in honor of The Czech and my trip unto it

Eat a lotsa smoothies

Try to be a better blogger bcuz I like to write it and apparently my mom likes to read it.
~End List (for now)~