Masaka!!!

I'm baking. I am actually breaking my number one cardinal rule (which goes something like: kitchens are for getting a drink and nuking semi-edible foodstuffs). I have spent my entire evening in the kitchen, making a mess, making baked goods. No one will believe it.

We're having a potluck at work tomorrow. Cardinal rule number two has to do with always bringing drinks, bread, or paper cups, napkins and plates to work-related potlocks, so that's two cardinal rules I'll be breaking. Tomorrow's potluck is a sendoff for a colleague starting med school, though, and I couldn't quite go the paper plate route since she's a good friend. So my house smells like baking and my kitchen is totally trashed.

I have made peanutbutter marbled brownies from a scratch recipe and (just in case said recipe is beyond my admittedly limited cooking capabilites), carrot cake cupcakes from a box mix with cream cheese frosting. Hopefully the poor girl won't have more desserts at her potluck than real food. If she does, we'll all just sugar-rush all afternoon. The pbm brownies actually look good. I'll wait 'til tomorrow to see how they taste because I'm almost sick from licking dregs out of various bowls and off mixing implements.

I had to shop this afternoon on my way home. For one thing, I only keep nukable foodstuffs in my house, plus cheese, coke, chips, etc. You know. The staples. I definitely don't have milk and eggs in my house regularly, and baking goods are definitely not in my cupboard. Well, they're there, but they haven't been touched in the last decade so I really don't want to use them. Plus I don't own (well didn't before this afternoon) a 13X9 baking dish or a cupcake baking pan. And I discovered that wire cooling racks would have been nice too. Still, considering that I'll use them about once every 10 years or so, I suppose I'm managing to survive without the cooling racks this evening. And who knows. If I own a 13X9 baking dish maybe I'll be motivated to contribute to other potlucks with more than drinks or monetary contributions. Or not.

Okay, I'm back. All the various things are out of the oven and cooling. Kitchen no longer resembles a war zone or disaster area. I have a surprising number of mixing bowls, measuring cups and spoons and other cooking-related implements for someone who avoids kitchens like the plague. Anyway, once things are cool I'll frost cupcakes and cut brownies into squares and I'm set for tomorrow. It wasn't so bad, although spending a whole evening baking is probably not going to be something I do very often. Once a decade would be about right, I think.

Yes, of course I took a picture. Proof! I said no one would believe me.

Hmmmm. I think I'll get up in the morning early enough to frost and cut things. Time to move along.