Other: Adventures in Cooking

When pouring hot polenta, try not to cover one of the handles!

As I mentioned previously, I've recently started cooking stuff from scratch. Here are some things I've learned thus far:

• When making rice pudding, make sure you actually have enough milk before cooking the rice, because you probably don't know how much 3 cups is supposed to weigh when you pick up the carton. Otherwise you end up with rice clumps, which, while edible, just aren't as satisfying.
• If you're going to try flipping your frittata onto a plate and inverting back into the frying pan, make sure your plate is bigger than the pan first.
• If you accidentally spill some of your unset frittata eggs on the burner when flipping because your plate is smaller than your frying pan, make sure you clean it up before the next time you cook with that burner or you'll wonder why your cooking polenta smells like burning eggs.
• Polenta takes a lot of stirring and is not for the lazy. Alternate hands for even muscle workout.
• Make sure Dipity doesn't make one of her excursions on the kitchen counter when you've left a bunch of chopped tomatoes on the cutting board up there.

At least I can say that I haven't set fire to anything, burned anything (except for some toast I was using to try to make bread crumbs that didn't get toasted enough the first go-round), or made anything totally inedible.