The Rogue Noodle

I learned about cooked spaghetti sticking to walls and ceilings when I was a young girl and they showed a character on a TV show doing it to try and find the winning lotto numbers in the shape the spaghetti made. Later, when I moved into my first apartment, I noticed two pieces of spaghetti dried on the ceiling where my roommate had tossed them to test their doneness and they hadn't decided to come down. I know now that you can just take a bite of a piece to find out if pasta's done cooking, but where's the fun in that when you can sacrifice a noodle to the ceiling?

A few weeks ago, I was making dinner, most likely the shrimp scampi pasta and the timer went off on the pasta. Scoop out a piece carefully, try not to burn myself picking up a piece, aaaand toss!

Now, fresh cooked pasta is a little sticky, which is why it sticks to the ceiling. It also sticks to you. So although I threw the noodle upwards like I'd done a hundred time before, for the first time, it stuck to my fingers and, in a move that Einstein would be proud of, altered its trajectory accordingly when it finally detatched. At first, I didn't see where that trajectory landed it. I assumed it was somewhere on top of the cabinets.

Aaaand I was right.



That, ladies and gents, is my rogue noodle, positioned for perfect visability upon entry to the kitchen and most difficult removal. It has been there for several weeks now. And because Hubby and I are getting a house soon, it's going to HAVE to come down. I have no clue how to best go about doing this, but hopefully I won't have to put on a hospital report "busted skull open removing a noodle from the wall."

Cat's Story: Egg-splosion

Here's a story from Cat about how not to re-boil an egg if your hardboiled egg comes out runny.

"So, a couple evenings ago I decided I wanted to make some egg salad for a sandwich to take to work for lunch the next day. I put the eggs on the stove to boil, then went to go fold some laundry. I came back and saw that the water was already boiling. I didn't want the eggs to be overdone, so I immediately took them off the burner. Unfortunately, they must not have been boiling enough, because when I peeled them, the yolks were still gooey inside. Oops.

I grabbed a microwave safe bowl, filled it with water and popped the eggs in, then stuck them in the microwave for two minutes. I have a lot of friends who hard boil eggs in the microwave, so I didn't think anything of it. Well, the beeping goes off, so I reach in and carefully pick up the eggs....

BOOM! The eggs EXPLODE everywhere! Boiling water flung all over my face. My boyfriend was immediately there. After I ran to the bathroom and washed out my eyes, he helped me clean up the mess. Getting egg off the CEILING sucks. I held a box of frozen vegetables against my face for a while and soon the ouchies stopped...so yeah...all good. And lesson learned. And now I have post-traumatic stress disorder from hard boiled eggs."

Emily's Story 1: Piece of Cake

Thanks to Emily for her two stories about education through experience in the kitchen. Way to think under pressure!

"Last month, I wanted to make a cake for my husband's birthday. I tried to take the easy way out and use a mix. As I started to open the bag, I thought, I should use scissors, but then I figured I almost had it open. The bag finally opened, and the mix flew everywhere! I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, throw it away and make one from scratch, or just give up. I looked at my mess: about half of the mix was still in the bag, with some on the floor, and some on the counter (and some in the skillet from last night's dinner). I tried to remember the last time I had wiped the counter down and how thoroughly I had done it. I remembered wiping it down the night before, and hadn't used the counter since. I decided that was good enough, and I scraped the mix into my bowl. As I did this, I saw a piece of shredded cheese on the counter. Maybe it wasn't as clean as I thought...but at least baking it would kill any germs! I still had to make up for what was on the floor, so I looked up a cake recipe and added a little bit of all of the ingredients and hoped for the best. The cake actually came out great! It was fluffy and moist, and no melted cheese was found in it! And since I only had whole wheat flour on hand, at least the cake ended up being a little bit healthier."