Bakers

There is a disaster baking in my oven right now. I'm again reminded why I don't bake cookies, pies, cakes, brownies, muffins, bread and anything else requiring the common sense dictated by the mind of a baker. First off, today was a madhouse at work. I led a few meetings, and did alright, by my standards, pointing out the obvious in cases where it hadn't yet been pointed out, resulting in good things. My attendance of said meetings left me little time to do what I typically do on my lunch hour, if I'm allotted one, which is to surf Cooking Light's site for dinner ideas. I did have in mind that I wanted to cook vegetarian tonight, because frankly, I've gained 2 lbs. again this week, which doesn't put me in danger of my 2006 weight but which does raise a red flag to remind me that we've been eating out and not paying attention too often lately again. Thus, I hastily, in between meetings, found a "tart" recipe. In my dessert mind, a "tart" is a cake. This particular "tart" recipe calls for leek, potato and pepper poured into refrigerated bread dough spread into a 9" pie Pyrex and topped with egg substitute, Gruyere, Parmesan and milk pureed. Where do I begin with the mistakes I've made?? I count the first mistake, to start, as paying nearly ten dollars for a chunk of Gruyere. Gruyere is a fancy Swiss cheese. Swiss cheese wedges might run like four bucks, on a bad economy day. Instead, I felt the drive to pay six dollars more for something named fancier which I cannot even accurately spell. I came home, unloaded the groceries, and went to town chopping potato and leek (chopping both at which I'm well seasoned, as I use both often). I grated some fancy cheese, dumped it into my food processor (next mistake: not owning a blender/food processor combo, and instead relying on a food processor alone, which is not equipped to handle liquids as much as chopping and grinding solids...more to come) and launched into the refrigerated bread dough management. Refrigerated bread dough. Pillsbury. User-friendly. The recipe instructed me to break into strips; let rest 5 minutes. Then there was something about forming a spiral beginning with one strip and continuing in spiral formation with each strip, pressing ends together to secure. Insert biggest mistake of all: the recipe informed me I should, after letting the spiralled dough rest again, roll into a 13" circle. Where I could, I reached back into early youth, before video games, before MySpace and before anything else that causes early onset attention deficit problems evolving from our fast-paced society, back to where roll into a circle meant, in Playdoh terms, roll under palm into ball. Ball, not circle. And boy, did I have problems after rolling that rested dough into a ball and then trying to flatten it into a circle with my fingers. I kneaded, pushed, held it up to let it sag at its perimeter - I did everything I could to get the 13" diameter out of it. The whole thing failed miserably. So I started smashing it into the pie pan, pushing, pulling, kneading and feeling increasingly mad. Meanwhile, three of my four burners are not working - pilot light problems. That had me frustrated also. So I "browned" the leek and potato mixture on the fourth burner which worked but which I rarely use, browning which I was not supposed to do, and then when I attempted to puree the gourmet cheese and egg and milk and Parm, the fact that my food processor can't handle too much liquid yielded a flooded counter, to boot. Insert: I definitely sound like a culinary student wannabe in this entry. That isn't far from the truth, although, I'm not looking forward to disappointing my audience (Craig) with weird "tart" that has more of an egg crust than a nicely browned bread crust since I couldn't manage dough too well. And what did I realize after the whole mess was shoved into the oven to bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes? When they wanted me to roll that dough into a circle, they meant with a pin. Rolling pin. KB, a rolling pin...hello? Do you spend any time in the kitchen whatsover, ever?? So I could have salvaged the dish if the above "spiralled" dough had been rolling pinned into a 13" circle and spread across a 9" Pyrex pie pan, with lovely "fluted" edges and all. Jeez, do I have a lot to learn, as evidenced by my day-to-day blunders! The timer just chimed, so it's time to go witness the horror that might in fact yield delivery in lieu of my "baked" goods.