Cooking/Following Directions

To all the Bright Lights parents: Your daughters may have come home with some rather interesting stories to tell this evening. We apologize for the confusion that may have resulted, and also for the craziness of the evening! Here is the full account, as told by both Jael and Sylvia.

To all His Lighthouse boys: A few of you may have noticed something strange about snacks Tuesday evening... well, here is the explanation! We're sorry that you had to bear the consequences of our mistakes, but at least you got to taste my (Sylvia's) mother's fabulous raisin buns. ;)

Jael: This has to have been the most amusing and fun lesson EVER!

Sylvia: Um... sure. ;)

Jael: It all started a few weeks ago, when Sylvia talked with her grandma (the usual baker for His Lighthouse) about the Bright Lights making snacks for His Lighthouse.

Sylvia: Note how it all started with me. I’m such a troublemaker. :(

Jael: Well, she mentioned it to me, and I thought it was a splendid idea! So, we started looking up recipes to use for muffins. However, since we wanted to be nice to any boys who had allergies, we decided to steer clear of every allergy we knew existed within the group, which meant that we couldn't use milk, eggs, soy, or wheat. We were going to try to make 96 muffins, although only 24-48 would be the "special" ones. :-P

Sylvia: We had some debate over whether to do muffins. With gluten-free boys in His Lighthouse, I suggested making something else but then Jael had the brilliant idea of using rice flour. “Genius!” we both thought. (I, being the naturally trusting person that I am--)

Jael: *cough, cough*

Sylvia: Um, I, being the naturally trusting person that I am, assumed that Jael had experience baking with rice flour. (Mistake number one: making assumptions on such an important point)

Jael: I, being the naturally brilliant person that I am, figured that rice flour is basically the same as normal wheat flour. So, why would I need experience with it to cook with it? So, the lesson before the baking class, I calculated everything we'd need, and put the "special" ingredients (like rice milk and rice flour) on a letter to each girl. I highlighted whichever ingredient they were supposed to bring, and sent them home. (Mistake number two: I didn't give each girl an ingredient that she might have in her home already! I just randomly handed them out.) Stupidly, though, I didn't make clear that they were supposed to bring whatever their highlighted item was.

Sylvia: Actually, she did a great job of explaining that, I thought... but maybe a couple girls didn’t hear/understand? Anyway...

Jael: ...so, anyway, today, we were all ready. Everything that we could provide was provided, and all we needed was for each girl to bring her ingredient.

Sylvia: Jael arrived at our house as usual... without the muffin pans that she had planned to bring. (Third mistake...)

Jael: ...Or the aprons or spray oil (Fourth mistake).

Sylvia: That didn’t matter, because we had plenty of both.

Jael: I still forgot them. But anyway...

Sylvia: Then the girls started arriving. The blueberry yogurt and rice milk arrived without difficulty. The girl who had been assigned to bring blueberries forgot them at home, but as we had some, that didn’t matter. However, the next girl to arrive brought blueberries instead of rice flour.

Jael: She thought that each girl was supposed to pick an ingredient that they had on hand off the list to bring, which is very understandable. I think she thought the yellow meant that it was just an important ingredient (which is very true...). So, here we were, with blueberries, rice milk (thankfully, the other girl who was supposed to bring rice milk forgot it, because we had more than enough as it was!), blueberry yogurt, and no rice flour. Now, it occurred to me that we COULD use normal flour, and just not be totally allergic free, but Sylvia had the brilliant (no sarcasm) idea to grind rice in a blender, and use that as rice flour substitute. I, being the naturally trusting soul that I am--

Sylvia: No wait... WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS? o_O

Jael: My head, deary. Where else? But as I was saying, I, being the naturally trusting soul that I am, thought it was a brilliant idea.

Sylvia: *shakes head* Wow...

Jael: *looks at Sylvia dubiously*

Sylvia: Actually, just after the prayer and singing, I went upstairs to tell Mom our situation and ask if I could drive to the local grocery store and pick up some rice flour. She, however, had the brilliant idea to put rice in a blender and grind it up to make flour. So we did. And it actually looked okay when I did it... but then we put too much in and it didn’t grind properly, so I told Jael to take some out and grind it in smaller quantities.

Jael: ...which I did...

Sylvia: I don’t know what she did, because then I went to quiz half the girls on their Bible memory verses while Jael helped half the girls make muffins.

Jael: You see, we had split the girls into four teams: an older girl with an younger girl. Sylvia and I would each take charge of two teams. :-) So, my teams were first in the kitchen. I'm not sure why we did the allergen-free muffins first, considering we had "experimental rice flour." (Mistake number 5). But we started away, happy as anything. I was helping a younger girl make banana muffins (since her older partner wasn't able to be there), and the other team was making blueberry...both with rice milk and flour. Well, we had a blast mixing and commenting on how clumsy we all were.

Sylvia: In the meantime, I was sitting in the living room helping girls recite, glancing at the time and thinking, What is taking them so long?

Jael: We were noticing that the rice "flour" was a little grainy, but I figured that it wouldn't make much of a difference. So, finally, at long last, we finished, and put the muffin pans in the oven. (Yes, we did need one more full-sized muffin pan, but we made do with two small muffin pans.) I happily closed the oven doors, assuming that, in 30 minutes, we'd happily be carrying 48 beautiful muffins over. Of course, I knew by that point that the other muffins probably wouldn't get done in time, because they all had to bake for about half an hour.

Sylvia: I was a little worried, knowing this fact, but thought that at least we would have the allergen-free muffins to take over. All the same, I was hoping we would have enough time to finish the chocolate muffins, so two of the girls and I sped through the process of mixing them up. Then we remembered: “Oh, wait... we don’t have any extra muffin tins.” So then I peeked into the oven to see how the other muffins were coming along. Now, I have had my share of cooking failures (as my brothers will be happy to testify), so I did not scream or faint or otherwise outwardly panic. I merely shut the oven door, took a couple deep breaths, and thought, “Um... this is not good.”

Jael: I was happily sitting in the living room, quizzing my girls on their verses when Sylvia came in.

Sylvia: By this time, Mother had realized that something was wrong and had come downstairs. She, too, opened the oven door, looked at the muffins, and closed the door again.

Jael: Of all this, I was oblivious!

Sylvia: For which you should be grateful!

Jael: *grins* So, there I am, quizzing Bible verses, when Sylvia comes in. I looked up, and she beckons me to the kitchen, so I hand the Bible over to another girl to continue quizzing and follow her. She opens the oven door, and shows me some of the saddest looking muffins I have ever seen in my life. It seriously looked like a cake!

Sylvia: Not even that! It looked like a mix between oatmeal and cornbread.

Jael: The banana ones did. The blueberry ones were a tad better: they hadn't overflowed each individual cup, and therefore looked like so many purple Reese's peanut butter cups minus the wrapper.

Sylvia: More like purple tapioca pudding...

Jael: Yeah, the rice was a little prominent in both batches.

Sylvia: Make that VERY prominent.

Jael: And Sylvia even forgot to take pictures of them! (Mistake number 6)

Sylvia: Believe me, we want to forget them, not take pictures to keep for eternity. :P

Jael: Anyway, I looked at them in astonishment. Now, if I had been my normal self, I might have started freaking out right then and there, but THANKFULLY, I had been "rather" slap-happy all evening--

Sylvia: For that we are very grateful! :D

Jael: --and so when I saw all the poor little muffins sitting in their pans, I just started to giggle. I'm sure Sylvia saw nothing funny in the matter--

Sylvia: Oh, I thought it was hilarious! ;D

Jael: Oh, well, good! But anyway, I saw them, and thought, "Well, we tried and we had fun!" Mrs. Peterson, bless her, was microwaving some frozen raisin buns to come to the rescue. I mean, when it's 7:55, and the muffins are due at 8:00, emergency measures must be taken!

Sylvia: My mother is AMAZING.

Jael: I second that!

Sylvia: She made those buns that afternoon, and without them, we probably would not have lived to tell the tale of this most interesting evening. ;)

Jael: So, once the buns were thawed, Sylvia put the pan in my hands, and said, "Okay! YOU go take them over, and speak to no one, and come right back." So, I did. :-) Thankfully, no one but Sylvia's grandma was in the house when we came in, and so we just had to explain that the muffins hadn't turned out. Then, as we were leaving, someone said that more were coming, which was mistake number 7. (I don't think it was me, but it's been such a long day that I really have no clue.)

Sylvia: So they returned... I was, in the meantime, scraping these grainy, mushy banana muffin-things (the girls called them “mushins”) out of the pans. The banana “mushins” were too grainy to really be edible, but the blueberry muffins, despite their slightly interesting texture, were actually quite good! :D

Jael: They were good! Kinda like blueberry crunch toast. :-) Except softer. So, we were happily eating at about 8:20 when the phone rings and it's Sylvia's grandma, asking if we were bringing anything more over. They were making all the poor boys wait! So, Mrs. Peterson (the amazing and awesome) found some cookies and some of the girls (not me!) dashed them over. *looks at Sylvia*

Sylvia: *looks at Jael*

Jael: And that's pretty much the end. We finished scraping out the banana mushins, and put them in a bag for one of the girls to bring to feed her goats. The chocolate muffins finished just as the last girls were getting ready to leave. The blueberry ones were half gone, and I'm sure some people will enjoy eating and laughing over them.

Sylvia: We wished desperately that we had made the chocolate muffins first, but alas; that didn’t happen. ;) But we learned many things... for one,

Jael: Never put rice in the blender to substitute for rice flour.

Sylvia: Never assume that Jael has tried something before.

Jael: Always blame Sylvia.

Both: ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS test recipes before promising to feed 25 hungry boys!

Sylvia: And always laugh when crazy stuff like this happens. ‘Cause it’s funny. :D

Jael: Many worse things can happen in life, and why not laugh at something while it's happening instead of waiting 20 years to laugh at it!? And, uh, yes, my lesson was on "not skipping steps".

Sylvia: And have fun blogging about your mistakes! ;D

Jael: And that is how our worst lesson yet in terms of visible success was actually the best one we've had yet, in turns of fun and laughter!