Archives: Why I don't cook at home very often

~~ Originally posted as a Facebook Note on October 6, 2009 ~~

She wanted to help, how cute is that?

Alright, so if making the world's scariest ladybug in cake wasn't bad enough of a disaster in my kitchen, enter dumb move number two - making homemade chicken nuggets with a toddler and an Oscar at your feet.

First, things are going okay. Jocelyn starts playing in the cabinet I just pulled a baking sheet out of, but that's par for the course. The silicone cake pans will get on the floor, but that's no big deal. She's happy and entertained.

I get my breading assembly line ready. A bowl of flour, a bowl of beaten eggs, and a bowl of Panko bread crumbs. I cut the chicken, making sure I only touch the chicken with one hand so that I have a salmonella-free hand available in case the phone rings or if Jocelyn decides she needs to get into something she shouldn't.

While I get ready to bread chicken, I hear her clanging in the drawer at my feet with all the frying pans and lids in it. I glance down and she's taken them all out of the drawer, and replaced them with herself. It's too cute, I can't say anything. I want to get my camera, but my left hand is an ooey-gooey-salmonella-laced mess, so that's not happening. So, I get back to breading. But alas, I manage to bump the bowl with eggs and they go all over the place, just narrowly missing Jocelyn's head. I start cleaning it up, but don't get it done in time, and here comes Oscar to help. Great, one more thing I need to watch his behavior to make sure it doesn't upset his stomach. Just once it would be nice that the only thing he eats is dog food. But no, that would be too damn easy.

Frying pan obstacle cours

I go to cross the kitchen to get more paper towels and I trip over the wonderful frying pan obstacle course that Jocelyn has laid out for me. And while I'm cleaning this up, she's gotten into the baking cabinet and pulled out the pecan crusher, quite a heavy (and deadly!) object. She takes the handle and heads over to the corner to beat on aluminum cans with it. Yeah, well, she's out of my hair.

I finish cleaning up the eggs mess, beat some more eggs and get started again. I finally get all of the chicken breaded and on the pan (which took some work, I ran out of room). I go to put them in the oven with some au gratin potatoes (worse yet, the generic kind ... what was I thinking!?!) and there's Jocelyn with an oven mitt on her hand - guess she wanted to help.

Munchkin struggling with the
Cocoa Puffs

I shoo her out of the kitchen so I can finish getting dinner in the oven and get cleaned up. I hear crinkling on the other side of the bar. I peek around the corner and I see an empty Cocoa Puffs box. And off she runs into the living room, where I find her struggling to get Cocoa Puffs out of the bag. It's too freaking cute, so I sit down with her and watch CMT and munch on Cocoa Puffs. Until I have to get up and check on dinner, and that's when I give her a small container full of Cocoa Puffs and I put the bag back in the box and put it away.

Back to dinner.

The good news here is that the homemade chicken nuggets taste pretty darn good, though it looks like Jocelyn isn't really impressed. Oh well, it was an excuse to use my new Blackberry Wine Barbeque Sauce, and that is happiness.