Duds

Ugh, Last night I made two duds. It was a disappointment.

So, yesterday morning when I was getting ready to go to work I put a pair of socks in my bag because I was wearing a skirt and tights and after yoga I thought I’d just wear my yoga pants home, so I needed socks. The bad part was that I forgot to pack ANY OTHER yoga clothes. D’oh.

I did the 30-day shred DVD instead, then started working on dinner (aka Dud #1). The recipe was one I’d seen in my April Martha Stewart for lasagna, but instead of noodles, you use zucchini. It sounded pretty good (dark-meat ground turkey, onion, tomato sauce, ricotta, and I added spinach) but it fell flat. It was the kind of thing that didn’t taste bad, exactly, but I also knew I would never crave those flavors again. Luckily, the Man said it was fine and he took the leftovers home to eat today. This is good, because I hate feeling guilty when there are leftovers in my refrigerator that I KNOW I won’t eat. I’ll just let them sit there until they’re inedible and then I have no choice but to toss them…


Dud #2: After the total defeat that was dinner, I thought I’d try my hand at FINALLY making the Irish Coffee Cupcakes I’ve been talking/blogging about from my March Martha Stewart. The espresso cupcakes turned out fine, but when I attempted the whiskey frosting, things took a turn for the worse. The recipe called for: 1 cup of heavy cream, 1 tbsp of whiskey and only 1tbsp of confectioner’s sugar. ONE TABLESPOON of confectioner’s sugar? In frosting? No. That’s not frosting – that’s whipped cream – and it’s not the right consistency for frosting cupcakes. So, I added sugar thinking there was some kind of typo. The second I did that, water leached out of the cream and the entire thing started to separate. My Man, ever the resourceful chemical engineer (but not so much a cook) suggested that we could save the frosting with flour, but, um, no. So, instead, I went with a very safe and delicious regular old NON-alcoholic chocolate frosting. I would not let THIS dud get me down.

We were hopped up on sugar for a while after that. Thank Gad.


And now for something completely different.
Here’s a lesson that I never learn: I should never put on eye make-up BEFORE getting in my car and listening to NPR because you never know when it’s going to be an awesome story about women who were hired by the US Air Force during WWII to fly planes from the manufacturers’ locations to the military bases so that it would free up the male pilots for combat. These women (WASPS) tested repaired vessels, shuttled planes where they needed to go, and sometimes even trailed targets for men to use as practice targets for live ammunition training. These women are only now being recognized by our government as heroes of WWII. Now. It’s 65 years later and only 300 of the original 1100 women are still alive. AMAZING.