Fudge FAIL

I like to try new things in my kitchen. A lot of times, I come away with moderate, if not great, success.

But not always.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: 

My latest FAIL. The S'mores Fudge Fail.

purses

At the beginning of this year, I carried a pretty big purse because I was job-hunting and I needed to keep my records, job descriptions, spare resumes, etc. with me. The bag I got was a really great shade of plummy purple, and it was tall enough to keep a portfolio but not HUGE - it had a slim profile.

After I started full-time permanent work, I didn't need to keep carrying around my portfolio. I lost the paperwork but kept the giant bag. And I bred in myself a new kind of crazy. My purse became the thing I've often sworn it would never become: a giant pothole of cluttery papery doom, heavy and lumpy and not convenient at all, attached to my shoulder and requiring me to adjust my stance just to port it.

NOT COOL.

Around the same time I decided I was going to lose my mind if something purse-ular didn't change and soon, I stumbled across a bin of my 'spring purses' (whatever that meant) up in the attic. Small cute bags! many of which I've had for years and still love! Perfect. Time for the switcharoo and re-establishment of at least one sector of sanity in my jumbled-up head. I picked out my favorite, a cheery little bucket bag from Coach a la 2002ish, with red and white and various-shades-of-blue stripes. It is SO CUTE and actually does not clash with a good portion of the outfits I wear.

This is it. Frugalista purse nirvana. I love it, I didn't have to buy it, and it's too SMALL to get cluttered up and jumbled, right?

Say it with me: WRONG.

I am now faced with a super-cute bag that is big enough for just the essentials, though I am not really a 'just-the-essentials' kind of girl. Time for a new strategy. I think it's time to be a grown-up and actually clean out and declutter my purse on a regular basis. Because clearly I have a problem.

Do you carry a purse, backpack, handbag, briefcase, or other related carry-all? How often do you find it needed to be cleared out?

general tso FAIL

In a fey fit of culinary inspiration, Brian and I decided to try our hands at making some General Tso's chicken...the yummy spicy red-sauced Chinese dish that can't be beat.

I thought this would be an appropriate venture because we had basically everything we'd need - not to mention some chicken that needed to be consumed.  We've tried our hand at some basic Chinese dishes, so it seemed a good time to step up the game.

It all started out well enough.  We got the chickens fried and battered no sweat.  When it came time to make the sauce, things were looking up.  It smelled good, I had the heat on the right setting, and we were getting really hungry.

The last step of making the sauce is combining the flavorful stuff you've been cooking with an oil.  When I did this, something happened.  They never combined.  And the flavorful sauce started getting darker and darker.  It was also getting thicker, which I thought was good.

It was, however, very very bad.  Almost immediately things got very sticky and stringy.  In a hurry, we tossed some of the chicken in to coat, and things just got weirder.

Stringy, super-sticky-stuck-together, and pretty quickly, hardened.

Brian was brave and bit down first.  Reaction: not happy.  It was CRUNCHY.  And reportedly tasted like charcoal.

I tried it myself.  Yep, definitely felt like eating fried chicken dipped in BURN.  Not appetizing.  Eli wouldn't even touch it.

I don't know what we did wrong (besides too much heat), but I think we might try again sometime.  Maybe.

The next time I was at the grocery store, I hit up the 'asian foods' section and got a premade bottle of General Tso sauce.

traffic cone FAIL

welcome to monday morning.

new job first day recap

I am sincerely hoping that this is not foreshadowing.

It says 'catastrophic failure,' for those who have to squint.