Amelia Bedelia and Me

I am Amelia Bedelia in the kitchen. I do not know what it is. Maybe it is the red hair. Maybe it was inherited. For years, though, it has haunted me. I remember once my mom asked me to make lasagna for dinner. My mom's lasagna goes by the name of Stouffer's. Easy, right? I follow the directions until I get to the part that says "tent the cover". What the heck? I had no clue what it meant so I left the cover off. Yup. Before I knew it the lasagna was burnt.

Another instance was making egg rolls. They were frozen and needed to be baked in the oven. (See a trend from my childhood?) My mom asked me to rotate the egg rolls. I went to the oven, opened it, took out the pan with the egg rolls on it, rotated the pan, and stuck it back in the oven. My mom looked at me with a blank stare that pretty much happened every time I was in the kitchen and told me I was not to rotate the pan. I was to rotate each egg roll. Well, why didn't she just say that from the beginning???

Experiences like these were commonplace so when my husband offered to take over cooking at the beginning of the summer, I literally celebrated for two weeks straight. No more tears as I threw out another failed dish. No more tears as Jeremy "advised" me what could be done better or how to properly cook something. No more. I was free from the torture of the recipes that are unclear and made for people who cook naturally. I could breathe again.

Needless to say, I am now a stranger in my kitchen. I have cooked once since that day. I decided to make blueberry muffins from a pouch. Once they were done, Jeremy took one bite and said "Wow, I didn't know anyone could screw up blueberry muffins." Yup.. I slowly put down my wooden spoon as it tried to beat him and walked away to never attempt baking again.

So what came over me yesterday is a complete mystery to me. It was my husband's 27th birthday and he had a crummy week. On Tuesday, he had hernia surgery. He could barely move, was doped up on meds, and just felt bad. I wanted to make this birthday as great as possible. I had not had a chance to do anything for it because all I could think about the week before was that he was going to be cut open by a doctor and come back to me hurt. I felt horrible.

So I decided to go to Publix. I would get him a beautiful cake, his favorite ice cream, and balloons. I went to the bakery and saw an oreo cream pie. Jeremy loves oreos. How perfect! I should have just grabbed it and left... but I didn't.. for some reason I decided to go down the cake aisle. Why???

I noticed that they had a "No Bake Oreo Pie" mix. 15 minutes with no baking and it was a little over $2. "I could handle this!" I thought. I also noticed that they had a pie crust already made and the filling sold seperately, but I seriously thought I could do it all. It would be so special to Jeremy for me to make something homemade. Oh... I should have seen the signs!

I read the directions on the box. "Mix 4 tbsp of butter with the crust mix." I melt the butter and mix it with the oreos. I then lay it in the pan and notice that it isn't filling up the bottom... then I see that I mixed the butter with the Oreo Crumbs instead of the CRUST mix.UGH!! So then I mix the actually crust mix with another 4 tbsp of butter, add it to the crumbs, and create the crust. It's ok, I think. It will just taste buttery. That's minor. Right? Well.. what I failed to read was that those crumbs I used in the crust was supposed to be put in the filling mix!! This is when I started to cuss. Spoons started flying. And Jeremy came in to see if I had hurt myself to which I replied, "NO, I JUST RUINED YOUR BIRTHDAY!" Jeremy kindly said no i didn't. (Probably because it was already crappy and I just added to the crap-fest like the awesome wife that I am). And then he said he would still eat it.,,,, Great...... He would suffer through my crappy WHITE pie with only the only oreos being in the crust smuthered in butter. To make matters worst, as a last resort, I decided to make the cake look happy by adding a ton of sprinkles to the filling...

Why I didn't just buy the freaking cake is still a mystery to me....