whatta pita crap

i finally remembered to take a couple of pictures of the bean's completed felt sandwich. in addition to what she already had, there's now slices of cheese, tomato, and lettuce. i did a little detail stitching on the latter two items to make them more realistic, although i don't think you can really see it here:

and here's her bag of chips. there's six potato chips in there, and i did more detail stitching to make them look like "ruffles". she likes to put them in the sandwich.

so much fun! i really do want to make more stuff for her, as she does get a kick out of playing with it, but it'll have to wait a little bit. i finally got to start on a dress for me last night, and now i'm obsessed with finishing it. i hope it turns out well, because the picture on the pattern envelope is super cute! wish me luck.

in my quest to add a little variety to the teen's brown-bag lunches, i decided to give this recipe for sun-dried tomato hummus a shot. i got everything ready, but then realized i didn't have any tahini. i turned to my friend google to see if i could get around taking a trip to the grocery store for that one item, and as luck would have it, a bunch of different sites popped up. i clicked on this one for homemade tahini and was stoked to find that all i had to do was grind up some roasted sesame seeds with a little olive oil, and voila! problem solved.

a quick whirl in my "food processor," and i was good to go. i even have enough for future use!

the rest of the process was ridiculously easy. i tossed in a can of garbanzo beans, a handful of dried basil, fresh garlic, some sun-dried tomatoes, and a few other things that i can't remember and pureed it all together.

i gave it a quick taste-test, added a little salt and pepper, and it was perfect. i'm not a big garbanzo bean fan, but this hummus was really tasty! luckily, the teen agreed when she poked a finger in it later.

there's no better way to eat hummus than with pita bread. as luck would have it, i'd found this easy-looking recipe for homemade pita bread - i still can't decide if i'm being adventurous in the kitchen, too lazy to go to the store, or simply a cheap ass (since i already had everything in the pantry and didn't need to buy a single thing to make the stuff). either way, who cares? homemade almost always tastes mucho better than store-bought crap anyway.

i was surprised that i didn't have to use warm water for activating the yeast. instead, it was room temperature, straight from the tap, and still resulted in lovely, fluffy dough.

as usual, i headed over to the grandparents' house to use their evenly-heating, larger-capacity oven. we'd been invited over for dinner anyway, and since the baking part of this recipe only required a few minutes, i waited till after the meal to get to work.

but after the oven had been preheating for about ten minutes, i happened to glance over right as a loud poppy-sizzly kind of noise erupted. at first, i thought it was the garbage disposal, with the ILs sharing dish duty right next to it, but i was alarmed to catch what looked like a fireworks display in the freaking oven. FIL pulled the door open, smoke poured out, the heating element lit up and fizzled out, and then the smoke detector went off. it was a little chaotic, and i immediately felt awful - i broke the damn oven!

the hub and his grandpa inspected the damage, took note of the oven's model number, and disappeared into the office to look for replacement parts. i kind of shrank into a corner, apologizing my head off, while everyone tried to make me feel better and tell me it hadn't actually been my fault. "it could have happened at any time, the oven's a decade old!" grandma said. and then - she's so cute - she thanked me. "i'm so glad you came over to bake, because this way everyone was here and i wasn't by myself when it happened. now, what temperature do you need? let's turn on the second oven."

i turned back to my bowl, but i was all flustered and kept screwing up the division of the dough, which was supposed to end up in 8 equal pieces. after a few tries, i finally got it right.

i rolled the little dough balls out as best as i could and popped them in the oven.

alas, it was a kitchen FAIL. i'm pretty sure i handled the dough far too much when i jacked up the division process, and my pitas ended up thick and dense. no puffy little pockets here. or maybe it didn't get hot enough - because after all, i'd broken the other oven. maybe there was a connection there. oy.

ah, well. the teen still took the flatbreads to lunch with her hummus, and said they were good. i'm so glad she's always willing to try my crazy experiments. although after a month straight of peanut butter & jelly or nutella sandwiches, i'm thinking she was just happy to switch it up a little.

i wonder what i'll fuck up in the kitchen next week. heh.