You get to a certain age and you think, "I'm an adult. I don't do stupid things anymore." Well, not so for me lately. Above you see a collection of domestic problems I've caused myself. From clockwise top left:
1. Sinks/drains. Do not clean jewelry anywhere near an open sink. I made the mistake of not closing the sink before taking out my earrings to clean them. I had no problem getting them into the jewelry cleaner; the issue was when I was getting them out of it, they were slippery and one post rolled into the sink and down the drain. I'm pretty sure my fiance loved getting the call at work from me, telling him that his Christmas present was stuck in a pipe. When this happens, the most important thing to do is not to run water, which can carry the item even further down the drain. We ended up having to go to Home Depot to buy the correct wrench, then using it to loosen the pipe. Luckily, the earring came right out and I now do not clean or place jewelry anywhere near the sink!
2. Ice cream makers. Follow the manufacturer's directions carefully. I tried to make frozen yogurt, using plain yogurt I had thrown in the blender with some frozen mango. I transferred it to the ice cream maker, turned it on, and let it do its thing ... for about an hour and a half. The machine really only needed about 30 minutes to freeze my concoction. I came back to a mango yogurt ice block, with the churning part of the maker frozen right into it. I had to put the bowl of ice block and churner into the fridge to soften up over night. And in the morning, my mango yogurt was liquid again. Sometimes it's not better when it's homemade.
3. Ice makers. The gods of frozen foods have been having a good laugh with me lately. Our freezer's ice maker is disconnected from the water line (due to a water leak prior to my move-in). However, the ice maker is still alive and kicking but usually in the "off" position. There is a lever which must be raised in order for it to be "off". Well, me and my Costco membership went a little overboard and at one point, we had quite the crammed freezer. Unbeknownst to me, the freezer's lever was lowered into the "on" position, probably from some ginormous box of Kashi pizza (so delicious, but so likely to be the culprit). The ice maker started trying to make ice and grabbed for the nearest material it could find - a bread bag. A Costco-sized bread bag containing something like 32 sandwich rounds. I didn't realize this until I went to get the bread out of the freezer and found the bag being held hostage by the ice maker. It was literally all tangled up in the machinery of the ice maker. I thought it was hilarious - the ice maker was eating the bread bag! My fiance wasn't as amused. He was tasked with getting the bag out of the ice maker. It happened eventually. It only took one pair of scissors and emptying the whole freezer so he could see what he was doing. Now I am very careful about not disturbing the ice maker's lever. That thing is a monster.
4. Double boiler. A pot inside a pot is not a double boiler. At Christmastime, I wanted to make buckeyes, which are a family tradition and more of an Ohio thing, I think. They are peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, for anyone who hasn't had one. Getting them dipped in chocolate requires a double boiler. The French in me decided to surge ahead with this recipe even though I didn't own a double boiler. I would make due, by creating a makeshift double boiler. I should add that I'm not the engineer in the family. I took a smaller pot and it rested nicely over a larger pot. Done and done, I thought. Except for when I went to stir the chocolate chips I was melting in the smaller pot on top. The pot shifted and fell into the bigger pot, drowning the chocolate chips and rendering them useless. I tried to re-melt the chips, both in the microwave and over the stove, but they couldn't be saved. Luckily I had another bag on hand and I started over with a different smaller pot, which I actually submerged part-way in the big pot of water because it wasn't the right size to hover over the boiling water. No chocolate got wet and the buckeyes got dipped correctly. My mom just gave me a true double boiler (the real deal) as a wedding shower gift. I wonder why?!
That's enough embarrassment for one day. More lessons learned to come!
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