Oh....disaster.

So with this being the eve of my very first Thanksgiving away from home, I really wanted to cook or bake or do something Thanksgiving-ish. However, I feel the need to share with all of you my disaster. Brad and I are going to our friends' home for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I really wanted to bring something with me for dessert. Well, last week Brad and I were able to purchase a Kitchenaid stand mixer with some of our wedding gift cards. We have been SO excited to use it, and it even came with a recipe book . Of course there was a pumpkin roll recipe that seemed absolutely perfect for Thanksgiving, and apparently to me, owning a Kitchenaid makes me a baker. I have news for you...I was so very wrong! :) I can't even explain the magnitude of a mess that was our kitchen, and sadly Brad was not here to witness my adventure, so I took pictures for him to see. Let me just explain the situation. I think it might make you laugh. Thankfully, after a crazy week at work, it really did just make me laugh.

First off...I should have known from step one that this would be a problem when I was expected to put a layer of Crisco on a cookie sheet, cover it with wax paper, and then spread MORE Crisco out. Seriously..I just created a fatty embolism for someone, not even kidding. I could cause a blood vessel to be clogged just with one ingredient.

So, this happens, but I'm still on the "I'm gonna make this work" train. Think again Next step, I was supposed to cover a kitchen towel with sifted powder sugar. Many problems in this.
1. I read 3 cups, recipe stated 1/4 cup. WHOA!
2. On a kitchen towel seriously?
3. In a kitchen with NO counter space?
4. So I tried the kitchen table...No no no
5. Move BACK into the kitchen with my 3 cups of powered sugar and out comes the cake from the oven.
6. I am supposed to remove this cake and flip it over with the wax paper onto the 3 cups of powdered sugar towel immediately. This part actually went WELL!

Ok, onto the next issue. Roll the cake from narrow end to narrow end. Problems...
1. The cake cracks
2. Then it cracks again
3. Here my 3 cups of powdered become an issue as it has caked itself on the towel, and barely touched the cake.
4. Then the cake broke it half. My goodness, could this get worse? YES oh yes it could!

Next, I just decided to leave it broken, and make more of a sandwich. At this point I called Brad at work and informed him of mission failure. He thought this was funny, and said if I was interested we had ingredients for cookies. One failure is enough for tonight, but the show must go on...so it was time to continue with the project. Filling. The filling itself was easy, throw the ingredients in and turn the mixer on for 10 minutes. I can't even mess that up. However, putting the "filling" into/onto my two 1/2 pieces that were supposed to be a nice roll, this proved to be a problem, as you will see in the photos below. Which brings me to the pictures...these are the state of the kitchen during my catastrophic evening. Thankfully, this has all be fixed, and it now SPOTLESS and smells suspiciously of bleach; I may have gone a little OCD to ensure we did not have ants with all my sticky messes. Alright, onto the pictures...

This doesn't look so bad...keep going.
Why did the drawers have to be open? Why did I have nothing under the rack that cake was sitting on? Why did I try to use 6 eggs instead of 4, and because of this leave two extra eggs sitting there in a bowl? Why did I think a strainer would work for sifting the powered sugar? Oh, if only I knew....
Those cans are the pumpkin and evaporated milk cans. We also have all my prior ingredients, measuring cups, and measuring spoons sitting up there on the counter.

And oh, oh yes, that would be my final product. Spillage and all. Don't you even worry, I wrapped that bad boy up and put it in the fridge just like I was supposed to. Someone will eat this, and they will like it! I would liken my creation to an eel. It is the length of my finger tips to my elbow. I'll give an update later on the taste, but I will tell you...I ate the batter and I ate the filling and they really were GREAT! So YEA!!!

So there's the story. I hope you enjoyed my trials.

As for news. This week has been pretty great, but uneventful thus far. Brad has been a sweet man and got up every morning with me at 4:30 am! I'm spoiled, I can't even lie about it! He is at work tonight, hopefully he'll really be able to enjoy Thanksgiving tomorrow without being too tired after working tonight. Work this week has been very tough for me. I do want to just praise the Lord, because yesterday was just awful...I mean truly awful. I cried at work, and that's just embarrassing. (Don't worry, just over stressed, all is great!) Today though, was my VERY best day I have had since I began at the hospital. I mean, the nurses with me at the pod were such a team, our tech was awesome, it was a positive atmosphere. It was just wonderful! It made yesterday just seem like it was so long ago. It made me realize that I'm not a bad nurse, and that bad days will happen, but life goes on. So I am so thankful for that! Other than that, we're excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow, but we will miss home! We hope that everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving!! To our families, we wish so badly we could be with you all! We love and miss you, but only just a few more weeks until we'll be home! Take care!