Baking & cleaning & such

"The only thing I've ever successfully made in the kitchen is a mess. And several small fires."

-Carrie from Sex & the City

I've never been the "Betty Homemaker" type. I do enjoy keeping things clean and organized because I'm typically a neat freak, but when it comes to cooking and baking and other wifey things, I'm just... not all there.

This has warranted some teasing in the past, mainly from friends of the male variety: "Who would want to marry you? What good is a woman if she doesn't know her way around the kitchen?"

To which I would always respond: "I'm not getting married anytime soon. I've got plenty of time to learn before I say 'I do.'"

Well, I still haven't gotten around to teaching myself to cook anything more complicated than a box of mac & cheese. However, every now and then I get in one of those weird moods where I just feel like doing some serious cleaning and baking. Up until a year or so ago, "every now and then" came around on an annual basis. More recently, though, I've been testing out my domestic abilities more often.

Example 1: The Christmas cookies that I baked and decorated last week.

The second example of this phenomenon came early this afternoon. I was sitting on the couch, simultaneously watching TV and checking Facebook, when I had the sudden urge to clean something. I walked in the kitchen and spent the next 2 and a half hour scrubbing it down top-to-bottom. I even washed every single dish by hand, ignoring the dishwasher completely. My parents were pretty happy, I think :)

After I was done I wanted to put that spotless kitchen to use, so I baked.

Cinnamon swirl bread & white cake: pre-baking

And after!

These random baking episodes, though not necessarily a huge deal by most standards, are a pretty big thing for me. I'm sure that normal people- males and females alike- don't consider baking a cake a huge accomplishment. But this is me we're talking about.

-----

Disclaimer #1: That quote at the beginning of this post? Yeah, it's cute and funny. But it also holds very true for me- especially the part about fires. It started way back in 1994 when I put a silver foil-wrapped Pop Tart in the microwave and nearly blew it up, and continues up to this very day. Just last month I caught a dishrag on fire while using it to take a pizza pan out of the oven at my apartment. It wasn't even my dishrag; it was my roommate, Amber's. Whoops!

Disclaimer #2: I feel that I should make note of the fact that both the cinnamon swirl bread and the white cake pictured above were derived from a box mix. I still take great pride in the fact that I can successfully bake things that are practically pre-made... So just be proud of me and let me work my way up to cooking from scratch!