So You Think I Can't Ruin...Lean Cuisine. Part Two.

I was explaining this story to a friend of mine the other day and didn't get a sentence into it. All I said was: "I was trying to outsmart the Lean Cuisines the other day-" when she started laughing. But it's true: I appear to be dumber than a frozen meal.

After a number of other attempts with the meat bag exploding before it was finished and seeping all over the place, I decided that the best place for the meat bag was in the middle of the microwave, so it would at least heat evenly before exploding. It always exploded in the second part of the heating, once the vegetable bag has been added. SO...I had finally worked out a system. I'd heat the meat part according to the instructions, in the middle of the microwave, but then instead of ADDING the vegetables, I'd cook them by themselves, then heat the meat later in a different container to prevent the explosion.

That was the deal. That was what me and the spitting death bags had worked out. But then I found the Cheese and Cracked Pepper Chicken with pasta.

This fucker exploded before it's first two minutes were up. It didn't even wait until the veggies were added. And the meat was still frozen inside the boiled sauce! When I opened the microwave, so much of the sauce had oozed out, it had covered half the microwave's plate and dripped out the front. Incensed, I flung the veggies with the meat and slammed the door shut, starting it up again. Fuck it, I'd just scrape the slop off the tray. I stalked off and started angrily punching buttons on the TV remote, drowning out the squeals of steam escaping in the kitchen. Good, let the bastard suffer.

It was the cracking noises that got my attention. When you don't know what you're listening to, it sounds a little like someone hitting a desk with a ruler, from two classrooms away. I was accustomed to strange sounds (and smells) emanating from my kitchen, but this was new.

I walked in to discover an electric light show occurring in my microwave. Flashes of electricity arced inside, and the microwave's interior light flickered. Sheltering under a pillow, I charged the offending white good and stabbed the cancel button. I debated simply throwing the whole thing away instead of having to open the door, but hunger won and I hesitantly peered inside. The seeping sauce over the front of the interior was sandwiched between the box itself and the door. For some reason, this angered the radiation gods and they had sent lightning to punish me. When I later cleaned the chickeney interior, I found scorch marks on the inside.

The meal itself wasn't bad. At least the meat wasn't raw anymore. I still use the microwave.

So You Think I Can't Ruin...Lean Cuisine

Lean Cuisine is the epitome of cooking for the incompetent. They now come in separate steamer bags, so it looks like you actually managed to cook meat in slop and vegetables separately, like a real person. However, the complication of calculating the time of cooking for an 1100 Watt microwave based on 850 Watt instructions proved a little bit too difficult for me, especially with regard to the Fish Florentine with Risone Pasta.

In my first attempt, I placed the fish and slop sachet too close to the edge of the microwave while cooking and it exploded. Cooking time: 6 minutes. Cleaning time: 36 minutes.

In my second attempt, I put the fish and slop sachet too close to the middle of the microwave, and the fish was raw. I put it back in for a bit longer, with the vegetable sachet (which is supposed to be in there by itself) and the fish exploded and the vegetables were partially frozen. I reheated the vegetables, fish slop dripping from the ceiling of the microwave onto the plastic, and burned myself. Cooking time: 26 minutes. Cleaning time: 15 minutes (I didn't try as hard the second time I cleaned, that's for sure).

My third attempt worked fine, but by then I was nauseated by the memory of raw, previously frozen, fish; twitching from memories of the burns to my hand from the dripping slop; suspicious of the possibly frozen or burning vegetables (which included zucchini, I might add, FFS) and smelling the previously cooked, slightly rotting smell emanating from the microwave from one or more previous attempts that I dumped the whole thing and did the only safe thing - I ordered Chinese food.

So You Think I Can't Ruin...Tacos

Twice, no less.

ATTEMPT ONE:

This was not my fault. Nowhere on the instructions does it say to defrost the frozen-solid mince rock before throwing the entire thing in the pan! Results as expected.

ATTEMPT TWO:
This was also not my fault. If I hadn't been using such a cheap, blunt knife, I wouldn't have slipped while cutting the tomatoes, imapaling myself. I then wouldn't have wasted fifteen minutes trying to staunch blood, while simultaneously trying to wash it off the lettuce, and I would have noticed the taco shells had been in the oven for ages and they wouldn't have caught fire.

It was the knife's fault.

So You Think I Can't Ruin...Scones

Like so many of by tales of woe, this is one of those scenarios that was ruined by one simple mistake.

I decided to make scones, and followed the recipie perfectly; measuring out the flour and...whatever the hell else is in scones, etc. But the words "sieve the baking soda" must have been overlooked. That, or at the time I just thought it was unnecessary effort. I also doubled the mixture, so confident was I, and baked the first half of the sticky goo in the bowl.

Of course, if I had sieved the baking soda, it wouldn't have clumped together, resulting in every second bite containing a bitter, fizzy lump, resulting in an overall flavour that was simply nauseating.

Being me, I decided to simply remedy the matter by splitting the remainder of the batter into two bowls, and adding pink food colouring to one and blue to another. I think I figured that if I was going to mix it a lot more, I may as well add some visual interest. I made the second batch; sticking the pink peices to the blue pieces with jam and cream.

The overall result: lumpy, misshapen, poisonous-tasting pink and blue balls of death.

So You Think I Can't Ruin...Meat And Two Veg

This is one of my more recent attempts, which makes it all the sadder.

I purchased two small fillet steaks, a bunch of potatoes and some of those three minute steamer bags of veggies. The idea was to make a steak, with a side of steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes. Easy, yes?

I had enough ingredients to make the entire meal twice, which came in handy after the first attempt, which ended in cold, overcooked steak and veg, and lumpy, dry potatoes. Speed was obviously key, so I planned it better the second time:

1. Put potatoes on boil.
2. When soft, dump in colander and press 'start' on microwave for veggies.
3. Dump potatoes back in now empty saucepan, add butter, milk and mash.
4. Turn steak.
5. Remove veggies from oven and plate; add mash; take steak of stove and serve.

Here's what really happened.

1. Put potatoes on boil.
2. Got bored and overconfident and decided to do a quick load of dishes in between.
3. Took way to long, potatoes almost liquid. Dumped hurridly into colander to drain - they immediately started to seep through the little holes. Dumped all back into saucepan.
4. Turned to look for steak to discover it still in the fridge, covered in what suddenly became about sixty layers of glad wrap. Desperately wrestled it off and threw steak into frying pan, which was now way, way too hot. Decided to leave at hot heat and just do everything else faster.
5. Threw butter into potatoes, hurriedly added milk. Not enough of either; too hard to mash; steak sizzling now; poured more milk on potatoes, while looking at steak. Added way to much milk, potatoes now liquid.
6. Turned steak, now blacked on one side. Had coughing fit from sudden intake of smoke. Decided to drain potatoes using saucepan lid. Couldn't find lid. Frantically ripped everything out of cookware oven onto floor (surprisingly a lot of stuff, considering...), found lid, tripped over mixing bowl, throwing lid across room onto sink. Crash into sink grab lid start draining. Hard to see through tears in eyes from smoke.
7. Steak catches on fire. On an electric stove. No open flame; I'm just that bad. Decided to pull it off heat and hold pan in naked hand which beating at flames with a tea towel. Steak no longer incendiary, now more charcoaly.
8. Remember veggies. In microwave, but time not entered. Steak pan in one hand, veggie bag in oven - take a second to read instructions. Start it running. Drain potatoes. Scrape charcoal off steak, like burnt toast. It doesn't work as well with a steak.
9. Plate. And Bowl. Potatoes still liquid. Added more butter. Steak still black. Poured a glass of wine.
10. Veggies - not bad.

So You Think I Can't Ruin...Spaghetti

The worst thing about this story is I wasn't even cooking the spaghetti - some fool just left me alone with it for two minutes.

The spaghetti had just hit the saucepan and was sticking straight up, with half of it out of the water, as is its way. I was left in charge of it and told to wait until it was a bit softer, and simply push it down under the surface of the water. That's it.

Of course, I prodded it a bit, got bored and just assumed that meant I should come back in twently minutes and check on it again then. It would take that long to soften...right?

So I wandered off and watched TV, while the steaming water softened all the spaghetti up to the top of the pan, at which point it folded over; the top half of the spaghetti now resting in the flames of the gas stove. Being oily, the spaghetti immediately exploded into flames, which ripped up the spaghetti, and down into the oil on the surface of the boiling water, which also caught fire.

It was at this point that the real cook wandered back in, to find me on the couch, and the kitchen on fire. Two minutes after she'd left.

We had rice for dinner.

So You Think I Can't Ruin...A Stir-Fry.

I had started the odd foray into buying real meat and actually trying to cook it. After ruining several fillet steaks, I decided that it would make more sense to buy cheaper meat, as it all went in the bin anyway. I purchased a packet of pre-marinated, sliced stir-fry meat and promptly shoved it in the freezer and forgot about it.

Once I'd run out of Lean Cuisines, pasta, mysterious Tupperware containers, pickles and cereal, I caved in and decided to cook the meat. I remembered to defrost it this time (but that's another story), and threw it in the pan. It hit the pan as a solid lump, but with some vigorous poking broke up into a bits and started to cook. Impressed I hadn't yet set it on fire, I threw in some satay sauce, peanut butter, vegetables, pickles, corn flakes, or whatever seemed appropriate at the time.

It was working! It looked like food! It didn't even smell too bad! The meat was brown, not black, the vegetables weren't totally frozen, and the satay sauce looked nice and thick and saucy.

In fact, it looked a little too thick. And sort of whitish, which was weird becuase it was brown when it first added it.

I prodded the mix again with a spatula, suspicious now. I racked my brains, trying to remember what I'd added, what could have made the sauce so pale and thick all of a sudden. It was almost fibrous at this point. Perhaps one of the vegetables broke up? The peanut butter? It can't have been the meat...

Oh God.

The penny dropped. The meat wasn't stuck together because it was frozen, it was sitting in its little plastic supermarket tray, covered in dark sauce. So dark, in fact, it had totally soaked the layer of absorbent cotton under the meat, renderining it almost invisible. And of course, being me, I chucked the whole thing in with the meat.

My stir-fry had about two hundred grams of blood-soaked cotton in it.

Crushed, I took it off the heat and stared at it. I'm not proud of how long I spent trying to fish bits of cotton out of the mix, before realising how futile it was. I kept turning the same thoughts over in my mind: "Who the hell cooks cotton?", "I bet this never happens to Jamie Oliver", "You know, cotton is a plant, so technically I can still eat this..."

So I just ate it. Well, about a quarter of it. Cotton is surprisingly filling.