Eyeballs stuck on your plate

Sometimes I wish I was Sean Kingston. 

Not because he's a big-time, rock star, raggae rapper who's been incarcerated and homeless (though sometimes I dream about how much more writing I would get done if I was incarcerated and how much material I would have if I was homeless), but because his latest song inspires me to cook the kind of food people could get addicted to. (Food porn, as Mariko would say.)

Is it too much to ask that when I set a plate of food down at the dinner table the heavens open and a choir of angles begin singing the Hallelujah Chorus?  

That's what I asked my kids after they called my baked potato soup nasty.

"You know, like that Sean Kingston song," I told them. "Where he talks about how his eyeballs were stuck on the plate."

For some reason it made perfect metaphorical sense while I was singing it. 

But not as much sense when my kids were rolling around on the floor, doubled over with tears streaming down their faces.  

That's when it hit me that maybe that song is less about food, and plates, and eyeballs, and more about a boy who's ipod is stuck on replay.

An easy mistake though, right? Back me up here, peeps. The song is playing on my playlist right now. I double dog dare you to tell me you don't think it sounds like Sean Kingston's eyeballs are stuck on some girl's plate.

You can see how it would be confusing, right?

But anyways, this post ain't about Sean Kingston's eyeballs, it's about my post traumatic cooking stress syndrome.  

Many of you know that my dream is to become rich and famous with my Dumb and Dumber cooking blog project. So lately I've been practicing by cooking my way through the America's Most Wanted Recipes cookbook, which I picked up from my twin's elementary school book fair. 

SUPPOSEDLY/ALLEGEDLY, it's the best recipes from some of the most popular restaurants in America. 

Last week I made Sante Fe chicken from Applebees.  I followed the recipe exactly word for word, measurement for measurement, ingredient for ingredient, (except I didn't beat the chicken flat with a meat mallet, I beat it with a ceramic jar of pump hand soap.)  

(Which also works well as a paper weight, btw.) 

After all the exactness and correctness, my hub simply said, "It tastes kinda like Chicken Cordon Bleu. Only with less flavor."  

So then I made Rice Pilaf from The Crab Shack. I was not familiar with The Crab Shack or Rice Pilaf, but bottom line, rice pilaf is nothing more than rice (CALROSE, of course) boiled in steamy, buttery, spicey water and combined with sauteed vegetables.  

When I asked my kids what they thought, they said, "It tastes just like . . . rice." And then they drenched it in soy sauce.  

Then I made Salsa from Chili's and I accidentally rubbed jalepeno pepper into my eyeball. YEEEEOOOOUUCH!  Don't try this at home, peeps. Better to have your eyeball stuck on your plate, if you ask me. 

Then I made a pumpkin cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  Only I had forgotten that my hand mixer is busted (sorry, Rockstar Brother and Skeet).  This meant I had to beat the cream cheese into submission by hand, which would have been worth the 40 hours of elbow grease had I not absentmindedly added twice as much pumpkin puree as needed.  It sat on my counter for four days without so much as tempting anyone to dig in.

Then I made some Broccoli Cheese Soup from T.G.I. Friday. 

"This porridge is too hot!" said my son. 

"This porridge is too cold!" said my other son. 

"This porridge makes me nervous," said my daughter. 

When I asked why, she said, "Because it's white.  In Hawaii, your porridge was always orange." 

"THAT'S IT!" I said ripping off my IKEA apron and wadding it up into a tight little ball. 

"Open wide!" I told my daughter.

The next night I made rice-a-roni.  



And no one said a word.