Three strikes, you’re out

Why does it seem like when you are cooking food for yourself or your family, everything seems to turn out just fine, but when you decide to cook that exact same item to give away as a gift – it’s a total failure?

I mean, I was just a mess in the kitchen tonight.

I didn’t take any pictures because I don’t want anyone to see how bad it all was.

Let’s see …..

Granola bars that I have now made so often we consider it a regular at our house. The honey all sank to the bottom, somehow dropping down in a way it never has before. They taste fine, but they’re stickier than normal and not as picture perfect pretty.

The kids will be eating them for breakfast tomorrow. They will be no one’s gift. Unless you want to call it a gift to me because now I don’t have to prep any breakfast items tomorrow. Yeah. I think I’ll call it a gift to me.

No Bake Cookies. Come on – can you get a simpler cookie? Who can mess those up? Oh, I know. I can.

Their texture is all wrong. Crumbly and faded looking. They look like last week’s leftovers. Like sand from a sandbox. Like rocks in mud. Like. Like. Like little brown blobs of nothing appetizing.

The kids will probably eat those tomorrow too. But not for breakfast. Although I can guarantee one of them will ask.

And then, oh goodness, and then . . . .

Roasted cinnamon sugar almonds.

Not only a recipe I have tried twice with stellar success, but also a recipe that costs over $5 to make, depending on the going rate for almonds. And not only a recipe that costs extra money but a recipe that requires a nearly four hour time commitment with stirring required every twenty minutes.

I don’t even know what went wrong here honestly. Maybe I didn’t have enough almonds. Maybe I missed a stirring. Maybe my crock pot rebelled at the heady scent of cinnamon.

All I know is this: I committed to my four-hour time. I set two alarms. I stirred when the timer buzzed. I whipped my egg white and vanilla until it was frothy.

But when my time was up and I stood balancing a hot crock pot over two sheets of waxed paper and poured out the blazing sugar almond concoction, I knew right away things were amiss. No clumpy tempting sugar cinnamon bits were tumbling out. It was just a mess of hot gooey something or other. It spread across the wax paper but never coated the almonds. When I peeled one up to taste it, the wax paper stuck to the sticky stuff.

It’s just gross, really.

No one will be eating it tomorrow.

The best case scenario for that glob of goo is that some mouse will be unreasonably tempted by its scent and meet his demise on my expensive almond mistake. Because it’s probably stickier than a regular glue trip and it sure isn’t good for eating, let alone gift giving and I was too depressed by my many failures in the kitchen to bother to clean up my mess.

Good thing the kids can eat those granola bars for breakfast because I’m sure not going to feel like cooking anything in that kitchen tomorrow morning.