Cooking Rut

I'm usually a decent cook. I mean, I can follow a recipe. However.

I have now failed 2 recipes in a row. 2 of 'em.

First, I tried to make these homemade oreos. They just didn't work. I made the dough, let it chill for the right amount of time, and for the life of me, the dough wouldn't roll out right. So disappointing.

Then I made these yesterday. These biscuits are my standby! They are cheesy, fluffy, and delicious! This time, they were tough and salty and just plain ol' nasty. 

What is happening to me? I just need a recipe to work, folks. Just one. Here's hoping to a better culinary week than my last weekend!

Foaming and squirting and fizzing, oh my!

I hate Coca Cola. 

No, I am not a Pepsi fan with a vendetta against Coke (I still don't understand that battle; they're both gross). Why, might you ask, do I hate it so? One word. 

Foam.

Disgusting, overflowing, unrelenting, and abounding foam.

When I work on the register at my job, part of my job is to fill drinks for customers when they pay for their order. Dion's gets pretty busy during our rushes and as a cashier, I have become skilled at helping customers order quickly and efficiently. Filling fountain drinks usually doesn't take that long unless they order the dreaded drink. Yep, Coke. 

Whenever I go to fill a cup with Coke, I usually leave it for a little bit while the foam dies down. I'll go run the ticket, grab a drink, run to the restroom, clean out my car, call my best friend, and the foam STILL won't have depleted more than an inch. Ok, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration; it still takes a long time. When it finally sinks down, there's only 2/3 of the cup filled with the soda. Frustration.

Filling a cup with Coke is better during a rush, even if it does waste a lot of time, because at least everyone is busy doing something and not staring at you. Everything becomes a lot more awkward when it's just you and the customer, standing there and waiting for the Coke to fizz down. At this point in the transaction, I've usually used up all of my small talking points ("It looks hot out there!" "Having a good day?" "Pastrami-good choice!") and instead, I end up making an uncomfortable comment like, "There sure is a lot of fizz in there! So much fizz. A lot. Whole bunch."

The foam of a fountain drink shouldn't make that much of a difference to me, but if you know me, I like to do things quickly. I talk quickly (so people tell me), type quickly, and I sometimes drive quickly. I have a weird of phobia of telling stories too slowly and I try to overcome that by talking faster than most people can comprehend. That'll fix it. All in all, Coke really kills my buzz.

It's not just Coke that drives me crazy. Root Beer and Cherry Coke (a close cousin to the fiendish Coca Cola) are both guilty of excess foam and Dr. Pepper keeps squirting erratically and spilling when I least expect it. Punk. This is why I prefer water over carbonation. 

I just looked up who invented carbonation: Joseph Priestly from England. The jerk.

Don't be a lemonhead

I hope that most of you have seen or at least heard of the show, "I Love Lucy". It is a classic in the Bailey household; I have literally grown up loving Lucille Ball and all of her crazy antics. If you haven't seen this show, wow. Your life just became very sad to me.

Tonight at work, I was closing the cash register. There are many duties to closing register like restocking ice, cleaning the counters and dumping the leftover iced tea and lemonade. This was my first time closing register and my awesome manager told me the easiest way to get rid of the lemonade was to pull it to the side and let it run into the small drain on the counter. He said that once it started pouring, I could reach into the lemonade counter to pull out the metal plug so it would come out quickly. Sounds nice and easy, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

The minute I reached into the lemonade and pulled out the drain, I realized there was a slight problem: the drain was partially blocked and wasn't draining properly! Lemonade was spilling out of the drain, onto the counter, onto the floor. I was in a panic, screaming my manager's name and fruitlessly trying to stop the gush with my hands, even trying to put the plug back in. A coworker told me to grab a pitcher to catch it and as we slipped and slid to grab one, almost falling multiple times, I finally managed to catch the remainder of the lemonade and ended the fiasco. 

It was one of those moments that seemed horrific and tragic while you were in it and once the moment passed, you realize how ridiculous it was. My pants were sopping wet, the floor covered in lemonade, and the best part was when I realized that multiple customers had been standing at the counter watching my entire spastic fit with incredulity almost dripping off their faces. It takes hard work to be as clumsy as me; thankfully, I've had lots of practice. I had to muster up the fragments of my grace and forced casualness as I wiped off my hands on my apron and refilled their drinks while pretending that I had not just made a run for the biggest spaz award. 

I was feeling pretty idiotic as I mopped up the ocean of lemonade on the floor until two particular moments in an "I Love Lucy" episode popped into my head. (I know the second one is horrible quality, but you get the idea.)

I laughed to myself, wrung out my jeans one more time in the trashcan and immediately felt better. I just love "I Love Lucy".