I'm terrible at cooking. Or maybe the more accurate way to state it would be that I am bored to tears by cooking and so I do it as little as possible. I also have a tendency to wander away from the kitchen while things are cooking. This has led to a lot of kitchen failure. When I do actually do the cooking thing, I try to make enough to have left overs, hopefully enough for a week. And this leads me to my latest adventure in the kitchen.
At my day job, there are regular fundraisers when grits are sold. Being from Minnesota originally, I hadn't had much exposure to them, but now that I'm in Georgia, I was convinced to try them--with Cajun sausage and pepper jack cheese. And I ended up liking the cheese sausage grits. I've even made them at home a few times.
Last weekend, I decided to make them again. The recipe on the quick grits says 2 cups of water for 1/2 cup of grits. I wanted to make 3 cups of grits so I'd have leftovers and I did some math. 12 cups of water for 3 cups of grits.
Everything is going well. I'd cooked the Andouille sausage and was cutting it up on the other side of the kitchen while I waited for my 12 cups of water to come to a boil. When they did, I added the grits. Hmm, I said, this looks much too watery. This is bad. I must have done my math wrong. It must be 6 cups of water for 3 cups of grits. (Trust me, while I can normally handle simple multiplication, that skill has deserted me more than once in the kitchen.)
I began hurriedly adding more grits. Like double what was already in there.
It didn't take long before I realized that no, my math hadn't been wrong. I should have waited to see how the grits expanded before adding more. Now my biggest pot is filled almost to the rim with grits and I somehow need to add more water or I'll have a solid lump.
There was only one thing I could do. I pulled out another pan and started scooping grits into it. Do I need to mention that grits dripped everywhere? I started out with a large spoon and switched to a ladle. My spoon rest became filled with grits. Some dripped down the front of my stove, the sides of the pots, into the burner, and onto the floor. The mess was truly epic.
Ultimately, the grits turned out okay, but I now have four big storage containers filled to the top with leftovers. I definitely didn't want this much left. :-( You don't even want to know how long it took me to clean my kitchen.
I seriously need adult supervision whenever I cook.
