Domestic Fail

Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I was in a little cooking 4H club. My mom and aunt were the leaders, and there were girls in the club from the neighborhood. My sister and cousin were also in the club. It was a great experience—I still remember the importance to leveling dry ingredients with a straight edge, how to boil eggs to avoid the green ring on the yoke, and why it's good to combine all dry ingredients before adding them to the rest of the mixture.

The culmination of our little club was entering a baked good into the county fair. I made lemon bars from the old Lion House cookbook, and I received a blue ribbon. I still remember being very proud of those lemon bars. I could conquer the world if I could make those. I've had a lot of baking and cooking successes and failures over the years, but overall, I consider myself fairly adept at cooking.

Fast forward to today: I'm in a book club that's meeting tonight. We're discussing Stargirl (which I've loved since the first time I read it). One of the most vivid memories from that book is the description of Stargirl's yellow dress when she goes to the school dance. I thought lemon bars would be the perfect treat to take. (Because they're yellow. Get it?)

I set out this afternoon to make said lemon bars from the updated version of the Lion House cookbook. After they cooled a little bit, I tried them to see how they were. Let me tell you, they were a classic failure. They didn't cook long enough and the lemon flavor was too strong (it wasn't sweet enough). In looking back, I'm sure it's my fault for two reasons:

1. Lemon rind vs. lemon peel
The recipe called for "lemon rind." I'm no professional cook, but isn't the rind the peel? After a quick Google search, it seems some are of the opinion that the rind is the peel and others think it is the white part just under the peel. If it's the white part under the peel, I don't know how you get to it without using the yellow part of the peel. Well, I included some yellow and white part to cover my bases, but maybe it was too much. I was supposed to do the rind of one lemon. Maybe my lemon was too large, or maybe I shouldn't have included any of the white part. (Any help from cooks more professional than I would be greatly appreciated.)

2. I don't understand large time ranges
I was supposed to cook the lemon bars for "18 to 25 minutes." Is it strange to anyone else that there's a seven-minute range? What does that mean? You can't exactly do a toothpick test on lemon bars because they're too gooey. How do you know when they're done? I left them in for almost the entire 25 minutes, but after cooling, I tried to cut them, and they were totally soupy. Clearly, whatever time I cooked them for wasn't enough.

I'm not sure what all of this says about my cooking skills. It could be that my nine-year-old self was a much better cook than my current self. Or maybe my nine-year-old self was a good cook under the close supervision of my mother (who will always be the epitome of domesticity to me).

I could probably make some obvious reference to a saying about what to do when life gives you lemons, but I won't. Instead, I have just one thing to say about this experience: this website makes me feel so much better about my life.