randomness from my tiny kitchen

It's no secret that I have insomnia. If you follow me on twitter, you've probably caught on to the fact that half the time, my tweets are in the 2:00-4:00am range my time. Our crazy new sleep schedule hasn't helped lately. So being the good wife that I am, I'm in the kitchen making my new favorite crock pot recipe for TLS to bring to work tomorrow. You ever have those things that you just want to say so someone else will know but they don't fit in anywhere?

Yea, well here are mine.

1) I have a lot of gripes with my kitchen. A lot. It's smaller than my bathroom. I'm the kind of girl that can easily spend 4+ hours in the kitchen without blinking, so the fact that I can't keep my pots, pans, stand mixer, crock pot, or heck, refrigerator in the kitchen is a huge problem. Well it gets better. There are exactly 5 outlets in my kitchen. A set of two on either side of the sink and stove, and a single one up on the wall by where I keep Fritz, my rooster. (More on him later.) The other day, when I was trying to use my stand mixer, I managed to blow a fuse. No problem. Plugged the transformer into another outlet. Blew that too. Emailed my husband in a panic because we did not have a spec of electricity in our house. He came from work to fix it. (We live 15-20 minutes from base.) As soon as he did, we tried to plug in the mixer again and ka-boom. No seriously, don't worry, Kitty is fine, but let's just say my husband had to take many a trip to the basement to get her to be that way. Since that fateful day, all of the outlets in my kitchen seem to be working again knockonwood but now we have a new problem.

The lights in my kitchen don't work.

Seriously.

Two days before, my husband had just put in all new lightbulbs, but just to be safe, I may have suggested insisted that he switch them out again. No dice.

Now my husband isn't exactly Handy Manny and can't do much more than flicking a switch in the fusebox (remember, I did have a man drive 35 minutes for this so I'm not exactly one to throw stones) and after looking up directions for how to fix our wiring or whatever (yea, not exactly a handy girl myself)- all of which were written for American wiring which we don't have, we realized that we will not get our lights back until we can get an electrician to come take a look at it. That's going to be a while. Germany just fell behind this weekend so it gets dark at like 4:00pm here. This is a huge problem. We went to the BX to buy a standing lamp to use as a temporary solution and of course, they were all sold out of every single one. And won't be in stock for a while. It's a Sunday so the German stores are closed. I've resorted to keeping my iphone set on its maximum brightness and using  several strategically placed candles to help me cook. Just call me Laura Ingalls Wilder.

2) We went to the commissary to buy food so I could you know, cook it. (Novel concept, I know.) I needed about 6-8 cloves of garlic and 3 onions. I got to the garlic and onion section and as soon as I set one foot near it, all of these fruit flies just swarmed out of it. So gross. No way in heck was I going to buy that. It's a Sunday so the German stores are closed. Yay.

3) On the days that the German stores are open, they are generally open later than the commissary. Fun fact, just because it says "American Ginger Ale" on the label, does not mean it tastes anything like the Ginger Ale that Americans are used to.

4) Last year, our very own Muffy Martini posted a link to a delicious-sounding pumpkin fudge recipe on her blog. I knew I had to make it. I was at a friend's house having a very grown-up playdate consisting of baking cookies and fudge (her kitchen is so much bigger!) and I made about 3 batches of it. It came out fantastic. So so good. People couldn't get enough of the stuff. So I said I'd make more. I went home, got all the same ingredients and set out to make another batch.

Floppity flop flop, flop flop.

It was a disaster, the fudge just would not harden. I'm not sure if my friend's stove has a better heating element than mine does or if it's because she has stainless steel pans and I have nonstick at home or what, but it was a disaster. This had never happened to me so I was perplexed. Convinced I had omitted a single crucial fudge-making step, I decided to try again. Determined that this would be a good batch. I followed the directions to a t. And you know what?

Floppity flop flop, flop flop.

Seriously. I decided to chalk it up to bad luck and spend all year sulking about it in secret. This year, I decided to revisit the recipe. This morning I raced downstairs, eager to beat the clock so I could still cook while I had daylight outside my window (seriously, wasn't there an episode of Little House on the Prairie that went just like this?) and attempted to make fudge. I'm sure you can guess what happened next, but just in case.

Floppity flop flop, flop flop.

At this point, I will not be making this recipe again. At least not until I get a new stove and a stainless steel pot. In the epic battle of woman vs. dessert food- rounds 2 and 3 went to the fudge.


I'm just wondering if any of you tried making this recipe and had success (or failure) with it? I've made plenty of much more complicated recipes in my life so I just don't get it. I really don't.