I've just been baking.

That's a fairly appropriate movie reference which parallels my whole life right now. If you have any idea what I'm talking about then you already know far too much about me to be allowed to live. We'll simply move on and I'll try to stop smirking.

In a misguided attempt to take some form of control over my ridiculous and unraveled existence, I decided to cook a number of dishes from a fascinating cook book that has been on my shelf (maintained in prime and mint condition and only once skimmed over) for possibly the better part of a decade. I suppose my state of mind was something to the tune of "It's soooo much better to do something than not. Right? I guess." Yeah, I was seriously just as motivated as I was sarcastic. Status quo for me. After skimming through the cook book several times, I chose three dishes to make. The first dish seemed simple enough for my purposes and possibly just as delicious. One of those assumptions proved more correct than the other. Anyway, I started with pepperoni rolls. Chopping the pepperoni was fun. I think I just like the act of cutting things up into tiny pieces. Observe:



After adding all the other ingredients and rolling everything into tiny balls of dough, I was ready to do the actual baking. I was under the impression that at some point during that baking process the tiny balls of dough would grow into something that didn't look like the product of an absurd Easy Bake oven experiment. Again, assumptions making an ass out of me. You, too, if you went with me on that one.



The finished product was... disappointing. Extremely disappointing. I had a stockpile of bite size mini pepperoni rolls that were incredibly dry and nearly tasteless. Not a very inspiring start to my sudden impulse to submerge myself into the wonderful world of cooking. Still, I had some momentum and could make it through another dish before submitting to frustration and total failure. Hopefully, my next dish would be slightly more successful and allow me some sense of accomplishment to build on.

Stupid pepperoni rolls.



I decided not to attempt a main course after my appetizer set back. I skipped ahead to dessert instead. I would make an apple pie, but not just any apple pie. No, this could be the most amazing apple pie of all time. At the very least, it would be the most amazing apple pie I had ever made. It was all about the crust.



Chocolate chip cookie dough infused with oatmeal to form a delicious layer of crispy cookie crust and then filled to capacity with sweet apple goo. I would completely lose my mind and start destroying the kitchen if this didn't end in absolute confection perfection. Fortunately, it did. This was the most amazing apple pie of all time and I made it. Hell to the yes.



Thanks to my amazing pie success, I was sincerely motivated and ready to tackle anything - except more pepperoni rolls, which I will never make again from that recipe. For the main course, I had selected '50s-style creamed chicken. I was a little apprehensive since I have a varying tolerance for mushrooms. Luckily, they were barely noticeable. Actually, the dish tasted very much like beef stroganoff. Probably alot cheaper to make, too. I wouldn't know, but maybe someday I'll find out.



Overall, I'd consider my kitchen experiment a success. Since then, I've tried a few additional recipes with similarly varying levels of success and failure. It's an exciting process of continuous trial and error.