Monday, April 4, 2011

Funny Newlyweds…


I don’t know if we still qualify as newly weds. I’m gonna say yes. But maybe the cut-off time for being newly weds is a year. Or maybe it’s after you have kids. Whichever one comes first? I don’t know… but Dave and I are somewhere in between. Been married for a year and a half and no kids yet. So… Newlyweds…

Here’s our newest problem (ok, we have lots of problems and this is probably the least of them, but it’s the one that goes with the story…) I work from 8 to 5 every day. When I get home, I usually haven’t thought of anything for dinner. So that takes time to prepare. I also haven’t seen my husband all day, so I usually just want to cuddle and talk with him. But I also want to start getting a little more healthy and I want to go to the gym more. All of that condensed into a 3 or 4 hour time frame. I also have lots of relief society stuff to do and meetings to go to… excuses, excuses. 


So it turned out that me going to the gym was not happening. I would rather make dinner, sit down and eat it with my husband, and then watch movies or talk to Dave for the rest of the night.  The only time I could fit in going to the gym was RIGHT when I got home from work. But then Dinner would be pretty late... 

One night Dave was kind enough to say that he would make dinner while I worked out! What a nice guy! Then dinner would be all nice and ready for us by the time I got home and we could eat and spend the rest of the night together. Lovely. 
So I got ready and went to the gym while Dave decided that he was going to make potato soup! Yummy! When I came home about 30 minutes later, everything was smelling pretty good! So I took a look at the soup. 
"Um... It's pretty runny... did you let it thicken before you put all the ingredients in it?" I said
"Yep! I thought I did." Dave stated. 
"Alright, maybe we just need to get it hot again and boil. Maybe then it will thicken up..." I said. So we heated it up again. It started to thicken up a little bit, but not very much. But I noticed that it started to get a funny texture. So I took it off the heat and let it sit for a minute. 
"Did you put all of the flour and butter in there?" I said. 
"Yep! I thought I did." Dave stated. 
"Ok, well, let's taste it and see if it needs any extra salt and pepper." So I took the wooden spoon that we had been stirring the soup with and had a big sip of the soup. 


Immediately I knew something was wrong. But I wanted to boost Dave's confidence in cooking so he would be more likely to cook more dinners... I kinda liked not having to cook the dinner! So I thought, well, it's not THAT bad... just kinda... off. So I tasted the soup again to see if it was edible. Um.... no. Not edible. I turned to Dave 
"This doesn't taste right.... It tastes.... sweet." Potato soup isn't supposed to be sweet. 
Dave decided to take a taste of it. "Yeah... that's gross. What did I do?" 
We went through Dave's cooking process to figure out what went wrong with our pot of soup. It sounded like he did everything right! I was so confused. 
"You put the flour in, right?" Dave said he did and then even showed me what flour he put in. When he reached up in to the sugar cupboard instead of down to the flour, potatoes, and pancake cupboard, I knew immediately what happened. 
Dave and I decided to buy our sugar in bulk at Winco recently. So we bought brown sugar, regular sugar and powder sugar. All of our sugar was in generic plastic bags from Winco. But we didn't buy flour in bulk because I had just bought a bag of flour from Broulims. So Dave, thinking that we had bought flour in bulk used powdered sugar instead of flour. 
I started laughing. This was just such a funny little mistake to me, that I couldn't stop! But Dave was feeling really bad that he had ruined a whole pot of soup. I composed myself and called my Mom. She always knows how to fix things. 
She suggested that I just add the flour. So I dissolved some flour and added it. The soup still tasted bad. So I added some salt and pepper. Still bad. More flour and some milk, still bad. More garlic powder, salt and pepper... still bad. More salt (What's the opposite of sweet? Salt! I thought adding more salt would balance out the sweetness)
We got to a point where we thought we could maybe choke down a bowl of it. It just needed a little bit more... masking. So I added more pepper. 


BLECH!!! I overdid it and the resulting mess-in-a-pot tasted ok at first, but the aftertaste was a combo of sweetness that wasn't supposed to be there and an overwhelming salty/pepperness that left the WORST taste in our mouths!! Dave dumped the entire thing down the sink. It was so GROSS!!! 


While we were cleaning up our mess, I decided to show Dave the difference between powder sugar and flour. So I got down the powder sugar that was just in a generic plastic bag and opened up the flour. I showed him how much whiter the sugar is and how the flour kinda clumps up a little bit. But when I grabbed the bag of powdered sugar to put it up in the cupboard again, I had accidentally placed it on a warm burner on the stove and the plastic bag had melted through. I lifted the powder sugar and sugar went POOF!!! all over the counter, stove, floor... 


OK!!! EVERYONE OUT OF THE KITCHEN!!! WE ARE NOT MEANT TO COOK ANYTHING TONIGHT!!!
After we vacuumed up the sugar, we left the mess as-is and went out to eat. 


Sheesh. Silly Newlyweds...... 




Needless to say, I have bought little containers and have labeled them "Sugar" "Flour" "Powder Sugar"... I have also made dinner every night since then. And no, I haven't gone to the gym regularly. But I am going to work on boosting Dave's confidence again... Tonight: Left over roast beef made into taco meat. I'll let you know how it goes...