Have you seen our official Right Relief Aprons?! Having used mine now cooking at home for both caregivers and my family I have already stayed much cleaner than usual ;)
It got me thinking about all the messy times I've had in the kitchen since I started baking/cooking as a kid. There have been dropped/broken eggs, glass pieces down the disposal (oops!) and boiling over water on the stop top. I have had my trouble with the broil setting on the oven. Could these have been avoided if I had been wearing my trusty Right Relief Apron? Only the kitchen Gods know. It certainly helps me feel like a confident chef! :)
The biggest mess occurred when I was about 12 in Peshtigo. It was a hot summer day and my parents were outside doing yard work so I was flying solo (minus the help of little sister Kel). We grew zucchini in our garden and everyone knows they grow like weeds! My mom had done the hard part...shredding it in the food processor and I was in charge of making a delicious chocolate zucchini cake. So yummy! I got to work, creating messes throughout the kitchen. I remember lots of flour, everywhere! much like the picture above but worse LOL
I put it in the oven and was feeling so accomplished that I decided, since everything was a mess anyway, to whip up some banana bread while the cake was baking. More fun than doing dishes while I was waiting, right?! I had done banana bread before so I thought I was an expert. It was ready to throw in the oven in no time. The problem was that the cake pan that was already in there and baking was in the way. I had never had to think about or maneuver oven space. So, without thinking, I grabbed the cake pan to move/make room for the break pan. Yup, grabbed it. With no oven mitt- EEK!
I jerked my hand back instantly and quickly which made the pan fall. Onto the open oven door. I rushed to the sink and stuck my hand under then turned around to see chocolate zucchini cake oozing, dripping, spilling out of the pan all over the oven door. The kitchen window was open so I started screaming for my parents and they came running like I had cut off a limb. They both had such looks of shock on their faces, what with the flour covered scene, me hyperventilating with my hand under a stream of water and the oven scene which now had cake batter dripping off the oven door onto the floor.
All the cracks and crevices of that oven got cleaned that day (after cooling time) as well as the entire kitchen. I don't even remember the burn on my hand. It was minor, I had jerked back quickly enough. We have retold and laughed about this infamous "chocolate zucchini cake" story more times than I can count. I have never reached into the oven without an oven mitt again. The moral(s) of the story is ... use oven mitts... AND wear your Right Relief Apron and everything will go smoothly and cleanly (is that a word?!)
And just because this got me thinking about big garden zucchini... here is a pic of Miss Violet with one the year she was born. We were comparing her height to the biggest one we grew that year- hehe!
