Darla Stories - Kitchen Edition

Remember when I mentioned that Brittany and I made cinnamon rolls over the holidays?

LOTS and LOTS of cinnamon rolls?

Well, it was somewhere around 21 pans of cinnamon rolls.

It would have been exactly 21 pans if the dough had risen like it was supposed to - and I still don’t know what I did wrong there.

I didn’t mean to make 21 pans of cinnamon rolls … I just wanted to make some to take to my neighbors/friends … and I read the recipe several times … always missing the line that said “makes about 7 pans”.  Since I knew I wanted several, I TRIPLED the recipe.  When I finally saw how much dough I had and realized how many pans I would be making I had to run out to Walmart to buy more pans.  One friend asked me if I was having the dough rise in the bathtub!!  It did make a lot of dough and although my house smelled like Cinnabon, it took a long time to make them all.

And I don’t really think they turned out all that well.

When they were all finished Jacob looked at me and said … “mom, can’t you just make them out of a can next time?”

And I said … “Yes, YES I CAN”!  And then I went to bed thinking it would take two weeks to recover from making those cinnamon rolls.

I’m sticking with the dough boy in the future.

You would think, in light of the fact that I baked cinnamon rolls for days on end, that Jacob would know that we had an oven.  But earlier this week I asked him to go put something up by the oven and, in all seriousness he looked at me and said … “Oven?  What oven?  We don’t have an oven.”

And I’m not sure if this is due to the fact that I don’t use it nearly enough or that he is a guy and guys sometimes say crazy things like that.  Either way, it worries me.

Lastly …

I made the tennis newsletter with a recipe of mine!  I dropped off my tennis team before we even started this fall due to needing to work on the house, but I still get the newsletter.  Each week they feature a recipe and this week it said …. “GO TO MEATBALLS” … from the kitchen of  Darla Baerg.  Then it said … “too easy and too good to be true”!

Can you believe it?!  I have a “published” recipe.

And yes, I count the tennis newsletter as being “published”.

But this part makes it even funnier …

I could not figure out how our tennis coach had my recipe.  I mean, I had taken them to this party where I was quite embarrassed by their “easiness”.  It was there that I learned my idea of “go to” is not everyone else’s idea of “go to”.

Then, for reasons unknown to me, I turned in the same recipe to our elementary school cookbook committee that was getting recipes to make a cookbook as a school fundraiser.  I got a call a few weeks later saying basically that “the committee regrets to inform you that your recipe is TOO EASY and not really a recipe and therefore cannot be included”.  Apparently it wasn’t good enough for the “foodies”.

My friend who called to tell me of the committee’s decision asked me “are you mad?”.  I absolutely was not.  I thought it was hilarious!  I couldn’t wait to tell my family that not even the elementary school thought I should be cooking!

My mom did agree with the committee that it wasn’t really a recipe but since it has now been published she has recanted.  It has two ingredients and three if you count the rice that you serve it over.

Apparently the committee had a change of heart and, unbeknownst to me, they printed my “go to” meatballs in the cookbook.

Which means that I have now had a recipe published twice.

Watch out Rachel Ray!