Blooming Women
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  • Blog—Maniacal Musings—Becky Lyn Rickman, Managing Editor
  • Blog—Jessica's Journey—Jessica VanVactor, Guest Contributor
  • Blog—My Armenia—Carol Rickman's Blog
  • Dealing with miscarriage
  • My Story
  • Circles
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Single
  • 5 Stages of divorce recovery
  • The Circus is in Town
  • (You're covered with) The Fingerprints of God
  • Thunder Roared and Love Soared
  • A Period Piece
  • A sneak preview of the Gertie sequel!
  • Six Steps to Cultivate your Femininity in the Business World
  • Chore Zoning or Don't try this at home!
  • The 50 with Meredith Morse—Opera Singer
  • The 50 with Jessica VanVactor
  • Memorizing Joy
  • AT LAST! My interview with Shan White, Life Coach for women in transition
  • Questions and statements we don't care if we never, ever get asked or told again (am I right, girls?)
  • The Date
  • Moonshadow's Spirit
  • Broken Writer + Hypnotherapy = Amazing Trips
  • The "R" Word
  • The 50 with Carol Shepherd Rickman
  • Triumph During Transitions
  • A Kentucky Afternoon
  • Mothers
  • 10 things chemo taught me
  • What if . . .
  • Forgiveness—A poem
  • Mantegories (n. from the Latin; man+categories)
  • Insomnia 101
  • Blooming Bud Interview: Sierra
  • Masterful Mindsets
  • It's in the bag!
  • Important lessons for children: Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
  • Nursery rhymes, and times, and slimes, and grimes, and crimes
  • Things I learned as a single mom
  • Sadie's Soapbox: Dating
  • The Dress
  • 8 Things That Have Surprised Me About Having a Large Family
  • The gift of longing
  • The Semicolon Project
  • Most embarrassing moments—culinary edition
  • MilitaReality—a brat's perspective
  • About those elusive wisps of thought
  • Being there
  • The Giving Mom
  • How I still haven't learned to keep my smart mouth shut!
  • If you give a mom a cookie . . .
  • Cacti and Geraniums
  • The Three Gardeners
  • Beauty is as beauty does
  • Words for Sabra
  • Arm scratching in Baltimore
  • Pornography didn't kill our love and friendship . . . I did . . . and how we got it back
  • Hardening off our little bloomers
  • The Wonderful, Magical Women of Blooming Television
  • Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
  • 25 Date Nights (that aren't dinner and a movie)
  • Hills Like White Elephants
  • Maryland Beaten Biscuits
  • The night we thought the house was exploding
  • A mysterious case of goosebumps or "What is that on the wall?"
  • Militareality—Real stories of military wives
  • Finding my metal in wood
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Chariot of Fire
  • Secret gifts of love
  • The best prank I ever pulled was . . .
  • Connie
  • Dating and other hazards
  • Favorite childhood memories
  • When God speaks . . .
  • Zanie gets into another sticky situation
  • No-see-ums: A little useful information
  • I love my kids, but . . .
  • Meg's poem
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Some of my favorite herbal recipes are . . .
  • I love my cat, but . . .
  • I love all creatures, but . . .
  • The thing all girls and women must see and know . . .
  • The Great Chicken Debacle
  • The Powerful Influence of Brothers
  • How I feel about blooming is . . .
  • Sometimes grandma is up—other times she is simply upside-down
  • Anyone out there as anxious as I am?
  • Some of my funniest childhood memories are . . .
  • You might be addicted to Harry Potter if . . .
  • This month's survey:
  • Another Blooming Bud interview
  • The most valuable life lesson I've learned is . . .
  • The greatest blessing to come out of the most painful thing I ever experienced was . . .
  • The most powerful influence on my life is . . .
  • The thing that could have broken our family, but didn't was . . .
  • The funniest thing that ever happened to me was . . .
  • The time my dad really surprised me was when . . .
  • NEW FEATURE: Interviews with Blooming Buds
  • ANOTHER NEW FEATURE: A survey
  • The most valuable life lesson I've ever learned is . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • One of the most fun days I ever had was . . .
  • The most scared I've ever been was when . . .
  • The people who have been the biggest influence on me are . . .
  • I like to relax by . . .
  • The best way to do . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • The most fun I ever had was when . . .
  • When I grow up, I want to be . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • The most amazing bargain I ever found was . . .
  • Those annoying things kids do and what they mean
  • My shameless self-promotion
  • The thing about getting older is . . .
Be afraid! I teach my offspring to cook, beginning with playdough!

most embarrassing moments—culinary edition

By Kitty Sanders, Guest Contributor
And I thought I was bad in the kitchen!
Ah . . . the kitchen. The heart, the hearth, the holiest of Holies in the human habitat. The place where the heart of the family creates nutritious and aesthetically pleasing meals to nurture her children. The workshop for instructing offspring on how to do everything from the same to budgeting to history homework. The haven from the world where intimate conversations about romance and plans and hopes and dreams are discussed with love and understanding. The stress-free zone in which . . . all of this rarely happens and more often than not, there is fussing, clawing, demanding, whining and the creation of, and I use the term loosely, food that may, if I'm lucky, sustain life.

I have always fancied myself a bit of a renegade in the kitchen. Why not add a little cayenne to the fudge sauce? Kill two endorphins with one recipe, so to speak. 
When we get together as a family or with friends, my children LOVE to pull out the kitchen failure card to show everyone. In their defense, it's not as if I haven't given them a lot of good material over the years.

 
Below, 'sample' some of my more glorious disasters:
  1. They always seem to start with their favorite, the Cream of Wheat milkshakes. I wanted to give them a warm, healthy breakfast on the go. So I cooked up a mess of the hearty cereal and poured it into a mug, added milk and flavorings, such as vanilla, chocolate, root beer, lemon and peppermint. YUM!, said none of them ever as they gagged it down, heaving for dramatic effect. 
  2. Then there was the fish. I love fish. This particular failure was sole, which I wanted to nutrition up with some veggies, so I baked it with spinach, tomatoes, and onions. The acidity of the tomatoes did nothing to brighten the fish, the spinach just laid there limp and whimpering, and the onions overpowered the whole dish. What a disaster. 
  3. I love baked New York style cheesecake and bake it only on special occasions because of the expense, both monetarily and calorie-wise. One time, we had the missionaries from church over, so I decided to whip one up. My cheesecakes stand on their own and need no extra toppings, she bragged. After dinner, I pulled out this gorgeous masterpiece and sliced it generously, serving our guests first and then my children. The poor missionaries asked meekly if there was topping for it and I beamed proudly, "no, certainly not." They politely ate it, bringing up more than a few times how they were watching their caloric intake and couldn't really finish the servings I gave them. Then one of the kids chimed in, "what's wrong with this?" I finally took a bite and realized the problem. I had forgotten one little ingredient—sugar! It was bitter, heavy and otherwise unpalatable.  I apologized profusely and then ran and retrieved some homemade strawberry preserves from the fridge and dolloped heaping spoonfuls onto my mistake. It went down a little easier, but what a shameful waste of cream cheese and eggs.
  4. Then, another favorite, is my one and only grilling experience. I don't grill. My then husband grilled. He was the grill master. I was the fetcher, the condiment-or, and the side-dish-er. Wanting to impress him that I could, in fact, do this simple little chore, I went out and lit up the gas grill before he got home from work. I got some nice cuts of meat ready and slapped them on and just as I did so, I felt drops of rain falling. I looked up to an ostentatiously stormy sky and then it went black. I clumsily wheeled the grill, now covered in dinner, up the back steps and into the kitchen. There is a reason they are outdoor grills. Outdoor gas grills. Outdoor gas grills that emit smoke into the sky where it dissipates and doesn't bother anyone.  When you bring an outdoor gas grill into the house, the smoke has nowhere to dissipate except the smoke alarms, where it seems to all gravitate toward, hoping to reunite with other noxious fumes for a grand choking party. It was nice to know we had neighbors who cared. A lot of them. In my yard. Sympathetically patting my head like I was 5 and then smirking at one another at my lack of horse sense.
  5. Another time, I put on 3 dozen eggs to boil and decorate for Easter. Then I went for a ride. Yep, completely forgot those stupid eggs. Water boiled out. Eggs black and broken. Pot thrown out. Stupidity and carelessness acknowledged. Enough said.
  6. One time, however, my disaster turned into a blue ribbon. I was making a big pot of chili for a Cub Scout cook-off and it was a very busy day. I gathered the ingredients, got it simmering, and hung laundry out to dry. Then did some vacuuming. Then did a few more chores. Then smelled something smoky. Yes, darlings, it was the chili and yes, it was scorched into a thick, black, crusty layer on the bottom. But the top 9/10 was just fine. I gently transferred it into another pot, careful not to scrape, and got it ready to go without tasting. When I won the blue ribbon, they asked how I got that wonderful smoky flavor into it. My secret!

Cooking is an adventure, like anything else. Have some fun, take some chances, and you never know how things may turn out. Life should be delicious, even with mistakes.

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