When Cooking Goes Bad

For as long as I can remember I've had a love/hate relationship with cooking. 

Sometimes (when I'm in the mood that is) I'm a master chef, cooking everything homemade and making big elaborate meals that require hours of time to be spent in the kitchen. 

And other times ... well, I'm much rather just order a pizza than dirty a pot. 

Last night was one of those I don't want to cook a single thing kind of days.  I should have took it for what is was and rolled with it.  But that's life isn't it ... full of should haves. 

Recently, in an effort to curb our spending on food and eat better, the hubs and I decided to start making weekly meal plans and produce grocery lists from those meal plans instead of doing the "oh my goodness it's 5 o'clock, what do I have stashed in the freezer that I can make for dinner?" 

On my weekly to do list was to make zucchini bread using one of the mammoth zucchinis we plucked from our garden.  Mike had every so nicely asked me to make it and off I went to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients that we didn't have on hand and made a note on our weekly menu that I'd get cooking Wednesday night. I love to bake, so I didn't foresee a problem.

And I do love to bake, really I do.... in the Winter.  When it's 90 degrees outside (at night!) the last thing you want to do is turn your oven on.  And so I was a grumpy, sweaty, ball of miserable while I slaved away making Mike's zucchini breads.

I should have waited until today when it was overcast outside with a lovely breeze floating through the windows to turn that oven on. 

I should have realized as soon as I cracked that first egg that I was in no mindset to bake.

I did realize it when I took the first bread out of the oven, only to drop it all over the floor and watch it crumble into a hundred pieces. 

And that realization was confirmed when I pulled the second bread out of the oven and found it black and hard as a rock.

Yep ... never should have set foot in the kitchen last night.

Today was a better.  Today I wanted to cook.  I wanted to bake.  And so I did!

Today I remade the zucchini breads, and they turned out scrumptious. 
I even cut up the cucumbers my mother in law brought me over from her garden (because stinking groundhogs ate the ones I tried to grow) and made homemade pickles.
And marinating in the refrigerator right now are buttermilk drumsticks, courtesy of Nigella  Express.

Yes, the kitchen and I are good friends today.
Yesterday ... not so much.