Allison Says

I am clumsy. Horribly clumsy. It started when I got pregnant, and hasn’t ended. At some point during my pregnancy I realized that I had broken a surprising number of our kitchen dishes, tripped over far too many nothings, and dropped one too many pots full of cooking food. It became clear to me that something had changed. Loving Google as I do, I Googled “Clumsy Pregnant” and found that it is very common to become a bit more clumsy during pregnancy. It has to do with loosening joints and, of course, the change in center of gravity. Well, my center of gravity should be (mostly) back to normal but I am finding that I am still horribly clumsy. Especially in the kitchen.

I’m sure I could bore you with every little example of the problems I’ve caused in the kitchen, but I’ll just share the big ones:

Case #1: I have been dying to make a sourdough starter for months now. Twice I got so far as mixing all of the ingredients and letting the fermentation process begin. I decided to place the starter in the oven with the light on for a nice warm environment. Placing anything in the oven that should not be heated up to at least 350 degrees fahrenheit is not a good idea. You’d think I would have learned that after the first time it melted. But no, I put it in there a second time. Both times the oven was turned on with the starter in it. First by Zach, then by yours truly.

Case #2: I enjoy using our cast iron skillet. Without a grill, it offers a nice alternative to frying. Well, it’s heavy. Very heavy. And I’m clumsy. Together, this makes a really bad combination. I dropped the preheated skillet (preheated at broiling, by the way) one evening while making delicious mint-lamb burgers. Our lovely little kitchen rug had a nice melted spot in the shape of the pan.

Case #3: Same skillet, different disaster. When I took the steak out of the oven for it’s “resting” phase, it was splattering all over the place (as broiling meat/oil/fat tends to do). So, naturally, I grabbed a splatter guard and placed it on top of the skillet. Well, a few minutes later I could smell something awful coming from the kitchen. By the time I got there, it was too late: the splatter guard had melted all over the pan. As if the melted rug on the bottom of the skillet didn’t make it smelly enough! Goodbye splatter guard, hello doubly-forever-smelly skillet.

Case #4: I had just returned from the grocery store and the liquor store. It was about seven o’clock in the evening, and I was making dinner. There was a pizza box on the counter from the night before that I managed to bump into, which successfully knocked over the bottle of vodka sitting on the counter. The glass shattered, the vodka splattered, and there was a lovely smelling, highly dangerous mess to clean up. If that wasn’t bad enough, I also knocked over my drink while we were eating dinner that night.

I have no photographic evidence of that disaster, so instead you get another disaster photo: