Kitchen Kut-Ups

I seem to be losing my touch in the kitchen!  A few nights ago I was toasting garlic bread in the oven and managed to singe my hand with the broiler!  Instead of retrieving the toast, I pulled out a hand bearing a brown, toasted streak above my thumb! Ouch!

The next day, cutting dumpling strips, I sliced across two of my fingers! (Not deep, thankfully, but they sent me scurrying for peroxide, antibiotic ointment and band-aids!)  Not only that, I have a sore cuticle from not wearing rubber gloves to wash dishes.

Maybe I've just been in too much of a hurry, getting supper on the table and remembering the toast as an afterthought.  Howard had cooked the evening meal two nights while I was under the weather, and I had to get back into the swing of things.

I had decided to make chicken and dumplings for our church dinner today, so a couple of days ago I bought a nice hen and asked the store employee where the frozen dumplings were. She had never heard of them, and directed me to the frozen noodles.  She managed to find one package of dumplings hidden behind the noodles.  "We have a truck unloading," she offered, "Wait here and I'll go check for some."

I took a couple of packages from the box she brought me, then second-guessed my decision and worried that it might not be enough.  That's when I remembered flour tortillas could be used as a substitute and cut my fingers slicing them.

The finished product was a success, despite my struggles with my old crockpot.  Taking it from storage and finding the plastic lid with a crack in it and the temperature knob missing made me wonder if the word "crackpot" would enter someone's mind.  I felt better when a parishioner told me my chicken and dumplings were "outstanding." Like most church dinners, there was an excess of food, leaving me some for leftovers.

Immediately following the meal, we had our annual church business meeting, and Howard was elected unanimously as board member! Still on a high from last night's Singspiration, he must have thought this was turning out to be his day!  Then late this afternoon he got a call from the coordinator of last night's event asking him back for a return engagement.  "I didn't know we were that good!" I heard him giving a phone message to our son. "He really piled it on us, saying several people told him after we left how much they enjoyed it!"

I think I'll go heat up a bowl of the chicken and dumplings for him, if I don't hurt myself in the process!