Cooking With Michelle Part 2

So after dangerous driving we get back to Michelle's house to try and bake everything. We get into the normal rhythm of cooking where I go to the computer and turn on the Numa Numa song for our ritual dance around the kitchen.

After we get all worked up from that Michelle starts pulling out the pans we need to cook. I had never baked anything besides cookies and brownies so my job was to stir or just watch in amazement. I love cracking eggs so Michelle was kind enough to let me do that. Then I got to stir the ingredients in the bowl. 

As this was my first time making these types of sweets I learned a valuable lesson. The raw mix tastes horrible. Just terrible. Cake mix tastes like bad pudding and I can't even describe the horror of cupcake mix. Brownie mix has given me such a false idea of the taste of these items. It's not fair that cake mix looks so similar to brownie mix and makes me expect it to be good. I forever hate it for that. It's like eating a skittle expecting it to be an M&M. Your face revolts against itself when the taste isn't right. You feel like your tongue is trying to slap you in the face for doing that to it. Not only that, the aftertaste will not leave you alone either. It takes forever to get rid of it. It's something you regret for a week afterwards. I'm cringing just writing about it over a year later. Beware raw cake and cupcake mix. Beware!

To be continued

Cooking With Michelle Part 1

So one thing that Michelle and I do a lot when I visit her is cook. She actually knows something about food and I'm fascinated by it, so it's always fun. Of course when we're together, there is always shenanigans. While it's impossible for me to remember and write about every happenstance we have done, mostly because I have horrible memory, but also because there's been so many, I decided to do a mini series called as you should have noticed;

So the first incident in the kitchen with Michelle I can remember to relay is last Valentine's Day. By last I mean 2010 not this years. I was bound and determined to make a cake for a friend while we were also going to make cupcakes for our drumline.

So the cooking adventure begins the way almost all of my visits to Michelle's does; a trip to Wal*Mart. This time we also had Zach with us. So in Wal*mart, we can never just go to the food we need. We have to roam around the toys section for a while first. I'm in college and I still love to roam around it. There's just so many fun things in there. The board games, foam swords, magic 8 balls, bubbles, hula hoops, tonka trucks. We just wander around and play with what we can until we get in trouble or bored or remember we're on a mission for sweets.

So we finally get to the food aisle and standing and choosing anything is so hard for us.  We just stand and stare for awhile touching things before we decide.

We eventually manage to choose something, in this case cupcake mix as well as a type of cake mix and then travel back to Michelle's to try and cook. 

To be Continued

Counting Backwards; Harder Than It Seems

So today Michelle and I were trying to figure out how old her dog is. She remembers getting Pip, her chawiener, (half wiener dog, half chihuahua. Makes for a short, long dog with bug eyes that licks you way too much and pees whenever you touch it. Or in my case she will pee even if I'm just pointing at her..), two days before we started 7th grade. Now we just need to figure out what year that was. Our conversation then goes like this:

"Well you're a freshman in college, count back. 6."-me

 "for some reason I feel like I need to draw a picture to figure this one out"-Michelle

" Haha, 2005. It was fall of 05 if my counting's right, 6 school years." (It's not right)

"so shes 6?"

 "It's 2010 Michelle. 5+5=10"

 "oh, i thought this was 11.........cause it would be when we get out of here. what the heck. my brain is not on."

Now I had yet to see my mistake in counting yet. Until 20 minutes later when I have a realization.

"We started 7th grade in 2004. James graduated in 2006. We were in 8th grade. So 7th in 04. 04-10 is then 6 years."

"ohhh"

And thus we finally had our answer. I hate having to count backwards. Especially school years like that. Since theres always two different calendar years to one school year I'm always wrong. People seem to be able to tell you the exact years they were in what grade, or at least the year they started school. I can't do that. It takes twenty minutes of counting around to figure it out.

It's not only years. I can't count my age for any grade either. I only know the age I am now in the grade I'm in now. Unless it's right after my birthday, then I always forget to add a year. I'm envious of people that can go, "oh I was 8 that year, cause I was in 3rd grade." I'm just like O.O when people say things like that. I'm like "I was 8 sometime in my life. I'm 19 now, so I had to be 8 at some point. And I'm in college so I was in the 3rd grade before. If those two events collided, well that'd be convenient."

People usually just look at me weird after that. I just have nooo idea how old I was at various times in my life. I don't know how old I was for family vacations, just that I wasn't old enough to remember them. I don't know how old I was when I learned to ride a bike, just that it happened. (I just want to say, my parents did not teach me how to ride, nor did my brothers. One day I just got on the stupid bike and went for like 3 feet fell over and went inside happy. After that I never really had problems. Except for that one huge crash. It wasn't my fault, it was my dad's. He grabbed my handlebars. And no, I don't know how old I was.)

I guess I'll just have to make up a handy pocket guide to my ages and school years. Just whip it out when I need it, which is more often than I should. (That sounds a little dirty, and I giggled like a little girl when rereading it. Which is the only reason I'm keeping that in.) But hopefully, being able to count this stuff never becomes vitally important, like life or death because I can't do it. I'm content to know that at some point, I was that young, and at some time I was in those grades. It's close enough and good enough for me.