Life Lesson #2

Read the recipe first and check to make sure you have all the ingredients. As a matter of practicality (and minimal frustration) this should be done before you actually start the recipe. I never follow this rule. Therefore things like these have happened to me many times in the past: I am fully prepared to make fried anything and don't have bread crumbs, I am well into making banana bread when I realize - oops - no bananas, I am making chocolate chip cookies and no chocolate chips, I am stirring sauce for lasagna and no lasagna noodles. This results in a few things: extreme frustration, lots of choice language, desperate calls to my neighbors, and sometimes, when those neighbors don't answer (or I am too angry to call them) a really strange concoction.

Fast forward to yesterday (does that make any sense at all??? I don't know I have only had one cup of coffee): I have been craving cranberry/orange bread for a few weeks now, and I have a really good, easy recipe for it. So, it's been on my to-do list for a while. Yesterday I finally got around to making it. I didn't check the recipe because I knew I had cranberries and I had bought 35 oranges about five days ago, so I just figured it was all good. Everything is cranking along nicely when I read, "Zest of one orange." Okay. I go to the fruit basket and rummage through about five apples and about 10 bananas and, what?????????? NO ORANGES??????? Then I remembered Malcolm cutting up an orange and popping it in his lunch box that very morning. Boo.

Well, long story long - I'd had a horrible morning to that point so I skipped calling neighbors. I still want friends, after all. So, I just left out the orange. Yeah. How good is that going to be? Cranberry/orange bread minus the orange. Hmmm.

So, let's take inventory on this situation and I will teach you another lesson (I know I am full of it this morning. Read and learn.) I made this cranberry/orange bread minus the orange (which tasted a bit like - I am sure you have already guessed at this point - BREAD..........with a few cranberries) at about 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning (a full loaf, mind you) and today there is one sad half of one piece on the counter. Sheesh. Life Lesson #3: Not eating meat leads to total and complete desperation in a family of 6.

That's all I got! ;o) Happy eating, my friends.