The food is lousy and the portions are small

My family, God Bless 'em, expects a home cooked meal every night.  And despite my lack of interest in cooking, I try my best to accommodate them even though *I* would be perfectly happy having a PBJ and a glass of milk for dinner.

I am Not Known for my fabulous cooking or ability to whip up a meal using whatever is on hand but usually, I can make something that everyone will eat. 

Okay, not always.  Take my spaghetti.  The only people who will eat it are TheManTheMyth and me.  Thing 1 prefers Alfredo sauce to my spaghetti sauce and Thing 2 prefers Chef Boyardee in the can.

Whatever.

Every so often I like to introduce a new recipe into the fold and sometimes those recipes are a Hit and get added to my repertoire and sometimes, they are Not.  Buffalo Chicken was a Hit.  Chicken meatloaf was Not.


And neither was last night's New Recipe.


I had noticed a recipe on the back of a bottle of French's mustard and I am all about trying out recipes found on the backs of bottles, cans and jars.  In fact, I actually have a cookbook titled, "Best Recipes From the Backs of Bottles, Cans and Jars."  I love cookbooks, I have quite a few of them and although I rarely actually cook anything found in them, I still love to read them.


Anyway.

This French's Mustard recipe for chicken breasts looked simple and tasty.


Simple, yes.  Tasty, no.


Mixing mustard with ranch dressing to pour on chicken should have been my first indication that, um, NO.  But I followed the super easy directions, mixed up a batch of sauce/marinade, covered the chicken with the sauce, let it marinade for about an hour and then baked the chicken according to the directions, which was 25 minutes at 350'.


Have you ever smelled a mustard/ranch dressing sauce that is heated to 350'?  It stinks.


Oh, and 25 minutes was so not enough time.  I had to up the temp to 400' and transfer the chicken to a baking sheet and let it cook for a total of 45 minutes.  For boneless skinless chicken breasts.  


Surprisingly, the chicken was not dried out and tough after 45 minute.  In fact, it was very juicy and tender.


And tasted like crap.


Okay, the chicken itself was fine.  It tasted like chicken.  That was covered in a nasty mustard/ranch sauce.

We scraped off the nasty sauce and decided that it was nothing that a little soy sauce couldn't fix.


Except we had ran out of soy sauce.  And everyone just sat there and stared at each other in a "Wudder we gonna do NOW?" way.


TheManTheMyth and Thing 1 bravely ate their slices of chicken, Thing 2 had just a bowl of rice and as for me, I took a few bites and then put down my fork and said, "I can't eat this.  I just can't."

So this recipe was a big fat FAIL.  

I think we'll be having spaghetti tonight.

Ticked off Tuesday

Today is Ticked Off Tuesday and lemme tell you, if you want to see a good list of things people are ticked off about, go on over to ByeByePie and read the comments.  We're a ticked off bunch over there.

Here's some of the things my beloved family does that really ticks me off:

Whenever we run out of iced tea, the pitcher gets placed in front of the Ice Tea Maker where it will sit until *I* make a fresh pot.  Nobody else seems to know how this thing works.  And yes, I hate my kitchen tile.  Someday, maybe, we'll remodel the kitchen.  But why rush these things.

Putting dirty dishes NEXT to the sink:

Instead of IN the dishwasher that is SO far from the sink:

Not unloading the dishwasher because "I didn't know the dishes were clean" despite a teeny tiny clue:

They are also incapable of closing cupboard doors:

Or doors of any kind:

They have the ability to ignore burned out lights:

And they find it too difficult to stretch their arm in the OTHER direction where the laundry basket is located.  So they just drop their clothes on the floor.

And if you think any one of these photos were staged, you'd be wrong.

It's all about Shaun White's Hair.

Every so often, just for shits and giggles, and also if I want to get all depressed and have a pity party, I will check my stats for this here blog.

The pity party part comes from seeing just how few people actually view my blog.  Although I kind of knew that because of the dearth of comments.  And the little stat thing that tells me I'm lucky if I get one, count 'em ONE, page view a day. 


Way to show the love people.

Anyhoo.  One of the things I can see on my stats is where my viewers, excuse me, AUDIENCE, are viewing from.  And by that I mean which countries are my viewers viewing from.

And whether or not they like to see me ending sentences with prepositions.  Because really, who DOESN'T like to see a sentence ending in a preposition?  And who was the Grammar Police who decided that ending sentences with a preposition is a Bad Thing?  And who came up with the word, "preposition?"

These are questions that will not be keeping me up at night.

Again, I managed to get completely off track here.

So, while perusing my stats, I see that I have/had viewers from the following countries:

Argentina
United Arab Emirates (no shit!)
Slovenia
South Korea (but not North Korea because I'm sure Kim Il Duck Dong or whatever his name is isn't a fan of the kvetching I do).
Russia
Canada (C'mon, Canadians, show a little love here!  I'm a huge fan of your national sport AND I can sing along to "O Canada" except for the French version)
United Kingdom
Finland (probably because of mentions of Teemu Selanne.  Or the Fins really like me.  No, I'm sure it's because of Teemu)
Germany 
USofA.

Some keywords that brought people to my blog:

"Sorry about that ding." 
"Follow me, I'm a twit." 
"Shaun White hair."

REALLY?  Those are what led people to check out my blog?  Shaun White's hair?

Well, he DOES have great hair.

I wonder what the 2 viewers in the United Arab Emirates were searching for that brought them to my little unread, unloved blog.

Probably Shaun White's hair.

It's ALWAYS about Shaun White's hair.