Dinner and the Disaster. Have a Seat. This Might Take a While.

Posted on December 4, 2009
Filed Under Daily, Life in L.A., The Boss | 22 Comments

On Thanksgiving Day, things started out great. The Boss and I each picked two dishes that we were going to cook, one meat, and one vegetarian, and got crackin’.

It was kind of like our own mini cook-off, only we didn’t try to sabotage each other. Probably because we were cooking for ourselves, too.

Had this been a real cook-off, things could have gotten ugly. The competition in this house is ruthless.

My tomato chicken curry, and garbanzo beans were rounding the corner to the finish line, and The Boss was finishing up his first dish (ground beef ) when he goes, “Wow, you’re working fast,” and I was all, “Yeah, that’s because I’m secretly racing you in my head.”

Ruthless, what did I tell ya?

Sure, we’re competitive with each other — who can tell the best joke, who already read the latest news headlines, who can make better farting sounds. But we really do work well together. We always say please and thank you. Like, “Dude, can you PLEASE get the hell out of my way? Good God, THANK YOU!”

Oh, I’m only kidding. Cooking together was like half the fun of the whole day. The other half of the day (and night) had to do with the pie. We’ll get to that in a moment.

While The Boss worked on his vegetarian dish (potatoes) he  spilled a mixture of “Haldi” and water all over his pants, the kitchen sink, the counter tops, and the tile floor. Not sure what Haldi is? Well that’s because it’s not an English word. I can’t help it. When I was a kid, my mom used to put me on the counter top in front of the spice cabinet, and call out for spices by their Indian names and I would hand them to her while she cooked. I didn’t know the English names of most spices until I was like, 25.

In a nutshell: A mother put her small child on a high counter top next to a hot stove, and let her play with chili powder.
Way to go, Mom!

Back to haldi, or as it’s called by its proper name, Turmeric, is like the deadliest form of permanent stain known to man, and now, our entire kitchen is yellow. I was able to salvage his pants by rigorously rubbing my Tide pen all over the stains, and then throwing them in the wash, but the rest of our kitchen looks like Big Bird got his hand caught in the blender. (And yes, I am assuming that his blood is yellow too.)

The Boss finished up a few minutes later, we both tried to pretend that the kitchen wasn’t a mess, and then I got started on the pie.

So many things went wrong, I don’t even know where to start. But I’ll start with this. The pie I wanted to make was a sweet potato pie with a marshmallow meringue, and OMG, Muslim Readers, ya’ll went crazy! I got comments and e-mails from so many of you that were all DON’T EAT THE MARSHMALLOW!!!!!!!! IT HAS PORK IN IT!!!!!!

Readers, I appreciate your concern. However, there was no need to panic because A) The recipe called for Kraft’s Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme (not Kraft’s Jet-Puffed Marshmallows) and B) Even if the recipe called for regular marshmallows, the “forbidden” marshmallows are SO like, circa 1995. Halal marshmallows are readily available at pretty much every halal store in the western world.

But, if you’re you’re still too sketched out to buy Fluff for your kids, take a look at this. These are the ingredients of the jet-puffed creme as seen on KraftFoods.com, and also as stated by Joe whom I spoke with on the phone.

Kraft’s jet-puffed marshmallows have gelatin, which is derived from pork (as if I didn’t already know that, Joe) but that’s not what I was using anyway. My family found out about the whole ‘gelatin in marshmallows’ thing in the early ’90s, and those were VERY HARD TIMES for me. Normally, I would be able to block out such a painful moment in my life, but it was too life-shattering to ever forget. I still remember the day my mom said we couldn’t make Rice Krispies Treats anymore, and then I went to Sandy’s house, and her mom had made Rice Krispies Treats that day, and they set them out on the table for everyone, and I didn’t eat one, and they asked why, and I said, “We just found out that marshmallows have pork in them” and everyone looked at me, and paused, and the silence was awkward, and then everyone ate them except for me. It was years before we made them in our house again, and I remember the heavens parting, and sunlight beaming down into our kitchen the day my mom came home and was all, “Look what I found at the halal store!” I’m pretty sure my sister and I attacked her like wild beasts, and by the time the dust and smoke cleared, we were sitting in separate corners, bellies full, eyes rolled back in our heads.
It was a beautiful thing.

So. Now that – that’s cleared up, let’s move on.

We had all the ingredients for the pie, except for THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE: The Fluff. You see, The Boss and I did our groceries the morning of Thanksgiving, which wasn’t a problem considering we weren’t going to make a turkey. But when we got to the grocery store and asked an employee where the Fluff was, he was like, “Oh, I think we’re out. You have to get that weeks before Thanksgiving.”
Sure enough — No Fluff.
So I had the genius idea to use Cool Whip instead. You know the stuff that comes in that little plastic container in the frozen foods section?

MISTAKE NUMBER 1.

We didn’t have any pie pans, so we picked up a set of three aluminum pie dishes from the grocery store, whereas the preparation portion of the recipe said that I’d need a GLASS pie dish, which I didn’t know until we got back home because I never read that part of the recipe, which led to lots of other mistakes because apparently, it takes like four days to make a damn pie, and you should read the ENTIRE recipe before you decide to make something you’ve never made before.

MISTAKE NUMBER 2,3,4,5 & 6.

The directions said to mix the graham cracker crumbs and sugar into a bowl, and add 6 tablespoons of melted butter. It was supposed to get moist and sticky, but it never did. So I kept adding more butter, and then more butter, and then MORE BUTTER. And it NEVER GOT STICKY. Eventually, there was a whole cow in here, and the consistency never changed.  I was supposed to press the mixture into my GLASS pie dish, and build the sides up above the rim, but that didn’t work because it was practically still crumbs. The directions said to keep the crust in the oven until it started to brown, about 10 minutes. But after 10 minutes it was the exact same color. So I left it in for another minute, then another minute, then another minute.
The total time it cooked was about 31 minutes.

MISTAKE NUMBER 7.

Apparently, for the filling, you have to cook the potatoes, and then let them cool, and then cut them, and then dig out their insides, and then make a puree, at which point I was all, ARE YOU SERIOUS. I did it, and then threw the potato guts into our Magic Bullet, which I’ve used to make a puree before, but the potatoes wouldn’t get mixing. They were sticking together, and the blade just kept spinning, and then it started to smell like rotting teeth, so I had another genius idea: Add a little bit of water. It started to work, and then I got over confident, and then I added two cups.

MISTAKE NUMBER 8.

When I poured in onto the crust it started to spill out everywhere (likely because I added two cups of water that the recipe DID NOT CALL FOR) and then I dumped the whole thing into a glass casserole dish, because that seemed like the best available option, and that’s when I saw that the bottom of the crust that I baked for 30 minutes was completely burned yet somehow the top of it STILL NEVER TURNED BROWN. At this point, I started to hate this pie. I wanted to quit, and also cry, but I refused to let a pie (that I now hated) defeat me.

I mixed the condensed milk and sugar, and all the other ingredients into another bowl with what was supposed to be a whisk, except I used a large wooden spoon because I broke our whisk a few weeks ago.  Then I was supposed to use an electric mixer (again, something we don’t have) and beat egg whites, and sugar, and salt, and the marshmallow creme (now Cool Whip) together and The Boss was like, “just mix it really fast,” so I did, and then the fat on my arms, stomach and butt started to jiggle, and I got really depressed because I realized that I was MIXING BUTTER, CONDENSED MILK AND SUGAR IN A BOWL WHILE MY FAT JIGGLED.

And that is NOT the kind of realization a woman wants to have. EVER.

In my blind rage over my post-marriage body fat, I threw all the ingredients into a blender as to avoid the humiliation of the jiggles, which turned out to be MISTAKE NUMBER 9.

I poured a thin, gooey, foamy liquid that was supposed to be a light and fluffy meringue applied with a rubber spatula (also something we don’t have) into the casserole dish, and put it in the oven. A few minutes later, what was supposed to look like this…

(Photo Credit: Lisa Hubbard, epicurious.com.)

Came out looking like this…

I tried a small piece to see how it turned out, and somewhere in there, there was a teeny, tiny glimpse of what could have been. I might try again someday, but that someday may not come for a while. I was quite shaken after this series of unfortunate events. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see my therapist. No, not the one for my emotional needs, the one for my knee. Though remembering the toll this pie took on me, and looking at this picture again, I’m starting to consider scheduling an appointment with whomever can help me forget that this ever happened.

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