Now let me tell you what really happened. Two days ago I found myself thinking a lot about my time spent in Argentina and decided to make empanadas, a food that I ate regularly there. If you're not familiar with empanadas, they're the South American version of a meat pie, a pastie, a pirogy, etc. They are made in a variety of styles and they are incredibly tasty. So I picked a nice recipe online (this one: Empanadas Medoncinas), bought the few ingredients I didn't already have, and got set this morning to make them.
The adventure started off so well. I had my ingredients, my bowls and spoons, and my sous chef. We were set.
As you can see, we were off to a good start. After a bit of fun time in her bouncer, she went down for her first nap of the day. When she woke up, it all went down hill. For some reason today she needed my complete and undivided attention. She wasn't happy to sit for long in the kitchen, or do any one thing for very long at all. Then she decided to stop sleeping. She took her first and second naps of the day, but magically stayed up from 3:30 until she went to sleep at 7:30. She never does that. Today must have been special.
Have I mentioned that I don't really cook? Or bake? What I can do is follow a well written recipe. But follow it I must. I have no skills in the kitchen, so I read every step two or three times to make sure I'm doing it correctly, and sometimes look things up on the internet as I go. This makes for a slow process even under the best conditions. Down the line, when I've learned from experience, I'm sure I'll be able to speed things up. But today? Today I started cooking at 10:30 am. The empanadas made it into the oven at 7:30pm. Quick math everyone. Yes, that's right. My adventure in baking took a total of 9 hours! It was mix a little here, chop a little there, change a diaper, change an outfit...
Of course, I decided to make the dough from scratch. I had all the ingredients and it looked so simple, so why not? I have a 4 month old baby, that's why not!
No, that's not what you think. I didn't resort to the bottle to make it through. I reached for the bottle when...
it occured to me that I don't own a rolling pin. I don't bake, remember?
Tara eventually consented to a little more time in her bouncer chair (notice the wardrobe change?) From this point on, I lost track of getting pictures. Jeff came home and was helping entertain Tara, so I started trying to add the filling to the dough circles. It's not as easy as it looked! I was so distracted by babycakes that I forgot to put the egg and olives in half of the empanadas.
Even so, they did eventually go into the oven and we did eventually have them for dinner. They may not have been exactly as I remember, but after 9 hours of cooking, let me tell you, they were delicious! I even made the balsamic chimichurri sauce from the recipe, but I didn't get a picture. By then, we were more than ready to eat.
Yummy success! Note to self: it's probably smart to only try this level of cooking on weekends when Jeff is around. I need all the help I can get!
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