So this morning I have to tell you all what kind of dramatic theatrics happen in my kitchen. I had my one cat and she is lavender and white and she is gorgeous laying on the center island, my black dog following me around. I always listen to music in the morning to get me going. So I literally had two dance partners at the ready, which is every prom queens dream. I was listening to “Broken Things” by Mathew West…go listen to it, it will make you feel amazing and ready for the day. This morning (and many other mornings too just to be honest) I was dancing around my kitchen doing a mini-broadway production with me in my kimono and my cat and dog as my costars. It was pretty awesome. I’m impressed really, mostly because my animals are so used to my crazy that they are now willing and grateful participants.

Ok, now that you are familiar with my state of mind, today I am going to write about a cooking fiasco that happened when I was pregnant with my first child. Now when I was pregnant I am pretty certain that my children were draining my brain cells through the placenta. I am normally a pretty decent cook. I was young and pregnant when I got married (gasp, the horror) but yes one little dirty secret slipping out at a time through blog. Unfortunately many of you have not stuck around to learn all of my little secrets, so the rest of us are in on it and that makes all of you my favorites. (Don’t tell the others, we can all be cool and wear matching sweaters and have inside jokes) I’m kidding….come back readers you are dearly missed. I apologize for being petty. Where was I? Oh right! THE QUICHE!!!!!!!!!!

So when I got married I got cookbooks, because no one can ever eat that much spaghetti! One of the dishes in my cookbook was Quiche. I decided that quiche was the fanciest food I had ever eaten (I was young and ate a lot of McDs then). I looked at this perfect dish in the picture and I was like it’s basically an omelet pie and I can do this. I write down all the things I need and run to the grocery store. Now the ingredients for omelet pie…I mean fancy Quiche, is pie crust, spinach, eggs, cheese (montery jack, swiss, and cheddar) and onions. So this is a pretty inexpensive and yet FANCY meal. I mean come on I’m not even french and I am going to make quiche for dinner (because I didn’t know it was breakfast food) (Also haven’t you ever heard of breakfast for dinner?) You feel me!!!

So I am home and I am cutting and stirring and pouring and I made so much that it fits into two pie crusts. That’s how good I am!!! (This should have been my first warning that something was  very wrong, because I could have also made a third quiche but no one ever needs three quiches) But I am pregnant and tired and I also want to show my new husband that he made a good choice by marrying me. (Another thing I had to learn was to stop relying on others for my worth) (If you are reading this…or even if you’re not….YOU ARE SO VALUABLE don’t ever doubt that) Ok So I get my two omelet pies….I mean quiches in the oven. They should be cooked and cooled by the time this beautiful blonde haired, blue-eyed, brilliant man who I adore gets home from working so hard to provide for me. (Please like me! Please be glad that you married me! I know how to cook fancy things like quiche!!!!!) It has been the appropriate amount of time for the quiche to cook and I open the oven and they look like two little puddle pies. Wait! What? Why? Well maybe my oven works different from the one “Betty Crocker” used. I keep it in the oven and I turn it up a smidge just in case. I have to wait and do nothing until the pie is done, I mean quiche.

I go and do some light housework and I go back to the oven and yup, puddle pie. Ok! Quiche, What the Fuck! So I put my hand in the oven to make sure that it actually is working. It is and I am determined to carry on with my FANCY dish. I see my husband pull into the drive way and I am so excited about tonight’s meal that I greet him at the door. He walks in and looks miserable!

“Hey I have a big surprise for you!” I smile

“Oh Yeah! What’s that?” he isn’t even a little amused. To be fair the last Big surprise I had for him was ‘You’re going to be a father!’ So maybe Big surprises aren’t his thing. I don’t know. But I was just as excited about the baby as I was about this quiche. Babies are so adorable and I get to have my own. My very own baby that loves me and I can be its mom. And the Quiche……Its FAAAANNNNCCCYYYYYY! So yeah I’m pretty excited about my life at this particular moment in time. What could possibly go wrong?

“Becki?”

“What?”

“What’s the big surprise?” He is standing in the kitchen looking annoyed.

I walk over to the oven and open it up…he looks in and then looks at me with this look of ‘what the fuck is this supposed to even be?’

“I made quiche!” I smile. I look at it and I agree that it doesn’t look great because it looks like cheese puddle pie….but its quiche and I think you need a french restaurant oven and all I have to work with is this American apartment oven. So it will be quiche once the conversion of French cooking time meets up with American cooking time….I don’t know currently it is two to one….any way it will work out in the end when we are eating quiche for dinner. (because I didn’t know it was breakfast food)

“You made quiche!” he says and smiles a little because he knows that I am so excited about it. “When will it be done?”

“It was supposed to be done like thirty minutes ago but I think I have the wrong type of oven!” I look at him and smile. “But it should be ready in like half an hour!”

He says “I’m going to go and change, then!” He walks away and I turn the oven up a little more because obviously french ovens are way hotter than american ones. I do the dishes and I eagerly set the table. I see my husband go into the fridge to get a snack. He makes himself a sandwich.

“What are you doing?” I ask, “We are going to be eating dinner soon!”

“I’m starving!” He said.

We are new to marriage and sort of two separate people who do their own thing because we don’t know how much it hurts Becki’s feelings after she had slaved all day over quiche and now having a sandwich because we are hungry and also because we don’t know that this is breaking some sort of wedding vow of thou shalt not eat sandwiches when quiche is cooking! But don’t worry we will never truly get the hang of it so it’s okay.

He eats his sandwich and I peek in the oven and a very strange thing has happened the pie crust is done, or over done as I call it, but the omelet part is still liquid. I am baffled. I then remember that my cooking teacher from high school told us that you should put tin foil on the crust so it doesn’t burn. I take the quiche out and I put foil on the crust and put it back in. I then go about my business. My business is apparently looking busy and not trying to worry about dinner that should have been done over an hour ago!  I think it’s been long enough the quiche should be done by now, it cooked long past the directions. I open the oven and WHAT THE ACTUALLY FUCK QUICHE? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME HERE? I am trying to prove my worth as a wife and I am better than cheese goop in a pie crust. I am a grade A+++ wife. But according to this fucking bitch of a quiche I’m more of an F+ because I still got points for putting my name on the top of the page.

My husband looks in the oven and announces “Yeah! That doesn’t even look good! Are you sure you did it right?”

I turn and look at him and burst into tears. “I think so!” I walk over to the cookbook and I read it aloud and say yes after each ingredient. “Pie crust, yes. Eggs, yes. Onion, yes. Spinach, yup. Two cups of montery jack cheese, two cups of swiss cheese and two cups of cheddar cheese, yes, yes and YES!”

“Umm, Becki?” he points in the cookbook at the dumbest fucking two lettered word in all of the english language “It says or”

I look down at the book! WHAT?

“You were only supposed to put in two cups of cheese and you put in six. Honey, that’s never going to cook. You made it wrong.” He doesn’t even know what he is doing to me right now. I can’t handle being wrong yet. I can’t be wrong in public like this. I don’t make mistakes this erroneous this soon in our marriage. Who the fuck do I think I am? I’m not a super model that can just rely on her looks…especially being pregnant…to keep her husband.

I’m not going to lie I wanted to get a divorce that night. Not because he was pointing out my error, but because I made one. I didn’t want to be the type of wife that made mistakes. I wanted to be the type of wife that was RIGHT! PERFECT! and RIGHT! So what I actually made instead of quiche (fancy omelet pie) was queso pie, except I didn’t know about queso so instead I made garbage pie that had a very burnt ring of pie crust around it. If I hadn’t been so mortified that my husband would drive me out to a nice farm and leave me there to live off of the land…I would have laughed and taken a picture. Because I would have loved to really have photographic proof of how ridiculous I was then. Trying to win some invisible cooking contest with one contestant and still coming in last place. Oh humility would be hard for this poor wife. She was so used to humiliation that being humble and laughing at herself would be tough for her.

As I am certain that you have all noticed, I got over not being able to laugh at myself. I mean I had to start laughing because I used up all of my tears on that fucking quiche. I made quiche a few years later and it came out perfectly. My husband said “I don’t really like quiche!” That was the last time I made it.

I think I’ll make it again for Christmas morning though. I have learned that if I want my husband to eat it I am going to have to lace it with meats….like bacon and sausage.

Moral of my story: Unless you are a mail ordered bride don’t act like one. You don’t have to earn your husband’s love and respect, you should already have that. If you don’t respect yourself, that’s something you need to work on. I would have to say that my biggest problems have been self-made. But my biggest problems stemmed from me not knowing my own value. So if this rings true to you, I want to take this opportunity to say that you are loved and valued. You are so worth loving yourself. What makes you happy? Do that. I got to the point that I didn’t know what made me happy because I so focused  on other people’s happiness. You can never make another person happy. That isn’t how it works. Focus on your own happiness and allow that person to find their happiness too, then and only then, can you ever truly be happy together. Also make quiche with only two cups of cheese unless you are trying to make a spinach queso pie in which case you are going to need the full six cups of cheese. I also want to point out that I do cook really well now, just in case I share some of my favorite recipes with you. (on an unrelated note my brothers and sister called me two cups for another kitchen mishap involving cream of wheat….but I promise I really am a terrific cook)

until next time 🙂