Epic Cooking day = Epic Mess

Today was one of those epic cooking days. As I'm sitting here tonight, I can't help but be a bit disappointed. In all my success today was a lot of failure too. Don't worry, I'm not down on myself, I just wish there was another Mandy to help. "Hey! Quit dawdling and pick up all that junk on the floor. Then go rotate everybody's summer/winter clothes! Then when you're done with that, the toilet is STILL smelling pretty funky."

This morning I decided I was going to get shit done! By that, I mean I was going to get a lot of the cooking done I've had on my to-do list. Don't get me wrong, I've done a lot of cooking lately. A lot of preserving. I've made 4 batches of homemade spaghetti sauce so far this fall among other things. 

Yesterday, I went out and bought 10 pounds of bananas. Sounds like my family's going to be backed up for a while, right? Nah, my husband offered for payment to my kids' Taekwondo teacher (his Krav Maga instructor) my awesome cooking skills as payment for the classes. So, not only is my family flying through my awesome banana bread, so is the teacher. 

While I am thrilled (in most moments) we can have an awesome exchange, I cursed all day that I only have 2 bread loaf pans. My oven could fit four, but unfortunately I only have two.  We're not spending any extra money right now, which means I have to do things the hard way sometimes. So that means I am left with making a batch, waiting an hour, wash all baking/mixing bowls, and then doing it again. And then again. And then again. I washed that stupid mixing bowl 6 times today. Along with all the other stuff. 

Victory at the end! I get it all done, make a killer dinner from scratch, complete with my homemade sweet dinner rolls and I see that clean mixing bowl staring at me. 

I swear it spoke to me, "You know, Mandy, you bought that pasta roller from the thrift store over there. Then you bought the semolina flour. You have time. Make some pasta. If you make enough, you can even try it with the dinner you're waiting on tonight. C'mon you know you want to get it done. You could cross off one more thing on your to-do list." 

So I whip it out. And wouldn't you know that was the moment when all the kids had to descend on me and bug the crap out of me? I call my person a two-butt kitchen. That's because only two butts fit! And I had my big butt and four little ones in there! 

We got a good start to it and I got quite a bit of pasta in the dehydrator.   I'm very excited to pair it with my homemade Alfredo sauce. Yum!

At this point your probably wondering why I still see any disappointment in my day. Well, I see tons of failures. My kitchen is a disaster, even though the dishwasher is ready to be unloaded in the morning. I failed in folding the 4 loads of clean laundry sitting downstairs. I failed to get the rest of the laundry downstairs, sorted, and started on. I failed in even remotely keeping up on the rest of the house today. All the kids seem to do an amazing job of just moving crap from a random spot in the house to another random spot. Today was no exception. My kids were also lovely enough to add any leftover food onto the floor they deemed not good enough to make it into their mouth . 

I would feel great about all the things I achieved today if not for all the things that keep piling up on top of the already-there messes.

Oh, by the way, did I mention I also made a batch of crockpot applesauce today???

My messy kitchen that will be the first thing I tackle in the morning. You can bet my family is eating cereal tomorrow!