Kitchen Chaos

One of the greatest gifts MS has given me is a valid excuse not to cook. 

If I have to spend any more than 5 minutes in a kitchen, I start to get seriously ratty.  Good thing I have a husband who is happy and willing to deal with the culinary side of things. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love food and I love eating, I just hate making it.  Before I had MS, I would lovingly prepare meals for my partner, just as I would lovingly clean the toilet, both activities brought the same level of enjoyment.  Now, the physical exertion, and no doubt the stress, sends my MS into overdrive and it’s just not worth the effort, especially as I’m not particularly good in the kitchen.  You know that saying, “Can’t even boil an egg”?  Well, until 4 weeks ago, I could say this about myself without a hint of irony.  Sure, I could do other more advanced things, but I’d never had the need to boil an egg.  Cue 4 weeks ago and my 3 little darlings were pleading with me to make egg and soldiers for their breakfast.  I knew I was home alone with them, but all the same I did a quick recce of the house in case my husband was simply hiding somewhere.  He wasn’t.  So, I filled a pan with water, left it to boil, carefully lowered 3 eggs into it, pulled up a chair and watched to see what would happen.  It must have worked because they all tucked in and there was no sign of salmonella.

I had hoped that the egg-boiling scenario was a one-off, or at least that I would have a break from the kitchen for another few months.  Alas, Pancake Day was on the horizon.

As with boiling an egg, I’d never had a need to make pancakes.  Somehow, for the past 40 years, there has always been someone else in my house who has taken on this task – and with great success too.  This week, however, that trend was broken.  My husband was working late with Parent’s Evening, which he couldn’t get out of, not even to flip a few pancakes for me.  So, I decided that Shrove Tuesday didn’t necessarily have to be on a Tuesday, why not a Wednesday or, even better, a Saturday?  But my daughter was adamant that she must have pancakes on the real Pancake Day, otherwise it didn’t count.

Oh well, I thought, if Peppa Pig can do it how hard can it really be? 

Very hard, as it turns out.

Searching through the cupboards I finally managed to find where my husband keeps the flour.  Oh flip, we only had self-raising and the online recipe called for plain.  Well, too late now, self-raising would have to do, as would the oat milk because we didn’t have any real milk. 

Forgetting to sieve the flour, I just poured everything into the mixing bowl, which again took a while to hunt down!  Now, when I’ve seen pancake mix before it has always looked somewhat smooth, but my mixture looked somewhat lumpy. 

Everyone always says that the first pancake is a write-off, so when my first pancake turned out looking like a screwed-up omelette, I wasn’t too fazed. 

The second pancake looked a lot more promising.

Until I tried flipping it.

And there you have it – for many reasons, I really shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen, and I’m fine with that.