Cooking Lesson #1

Last week I told myself that I was going to make 3 things before Kurt got home - a quiche, lasagna, and chocolate cheesecake. Well, last night I made a valiant effort in the kitchen and had, what I consider, moderate success. Moderate success meaning that nothing caught fire or gave me food poisoning. Here are a few of the things I learned:
(1) Read the whole recipe first. The recipe for the quiche went something like this- Step one - fry the bacon in a pan. Why would I do that, putting the bacon on a papertowel in the microwave is so much faster? Step two - use the bacon grease to ... Shit, hope olive oil works okay.
(2) A "dash" is a stupid measurement. What the heck is a dash?? I even tried to look it up in Wikipedia, not there. I know it's small, but how small? Because it was referring to red pepper, I erred on the side of caution and put in just a wee little bit.
(3) Aluminum Pie Pans are not the most stable platforms. I just barely avoided disaster trying to put the quiche in the oven (almost had quiche all OVER the oven) by deciding to use two hands at the last moment.
(4) Don't frown at a 30 minute cooking time. That's just about the exact time needed to clean up the mess you just made and prepare a dessert (in this case chocolate cheesecake - yum).
(5) Cup vs. Ounce. Now this is just silly. The cheesecake recipe called for 16oz of whipped cream cheese and 1 cup of sour cream. Why not 8 ounces of sour cream and make it consistent. I had to refer to the internet again just to confirm that 1 cup does equal 8 ounces, I'm not really into measurements.
(6) The cheesecake recipe said to mix the cream cheese, sour cream, and chocolate pudding mix with a strong spoon. What they forgot to mention is that you will need a strong arm to use the strong spoon. The cheesecake really turned out to be more of a chocolate flavored cream cheese, but that's okay with me, I like all kinds of cheese.
At this point I felt pretty good. The kitchen was clean, the chocolate flavored cream cheese was in the oreo pie crust (not a great crust to use, crumbles easily), and the quiche was in the oven looking pretty good. 30 minutes went by and I checked the quiche. Still looked pretty wet. I didn't like the idea of eating raw eggs so set the timer for 5 minutes. Still didn't look quite ready, so I set the timer for another 5 minutes. This time I took it out (with two hands) and cut a little piece out. It could still use a little more. 10 minutes later it wasn't burned and looked pretty good. I was very proud of myself. I took a picture for you. Then I cut myself a piece a took a bite. The quiche consisted of eggs, milk, spices, bacon, and onions. I didn't taste any of those, I tasted dough. The pie crust never cooked. Damn. The first step of the recipe was to put the crust in the over for 10 minutes or until golden brown. I was so worried about burning it I took it out after 8 minutes. So, to not let it go to waste, I ate the stuff off the top of the pie crust and just threw the crust away. It was alright, but it was essentially an omelet and I could have done the same thing in a frying pan with a lot less effort. You have to give me credit for trying though.
As for the lasagna... well after seeing that the "one step lasagna" took up two pages of directions, I opted to go for the REAL one-step lasagna, the frozen kind that you just put in the oven. We're having that for dinner tomorrow.