There are Some Days When....

Nothing goes seriously wrong, but a lot goes seriously not quite right.

Luckily I was trained well by my folks that when I have butt loads of people coming for dinner, you start preparing way in advance. My Mom starts weeks in advance... the lessons didn't take so well on me, I start the night before, but hey, at least I'm not a huge procrastinator. Like my Dad, I do my baking in advance. I went shopping last night (Tuesday night) so as to not be at Publix with thousands of people today (Wednesday).

I'm so glad I bake the day before. I break open my can of pumpkin I had in my pantry and I set out my Sweetened Condensed milk. As I open the pumpkin I notice this tiny little detail I did not notice before... Pumpkin has an expiration date and mine was two YEARS past. Sure enough, that can had nothing in it I wanted to bake with. Now I knew I had to go to Publix. I looked at my can of Sweetened Condensed milk and thought, "Uh oh. If my Pumpkin has been in there two years, how long has this been in there?" I opened it and the milk was orange.

So I did what I always do when faced with a cooking dilemma. I called my folks. The Great Omnipotent One answered. I said, "Dad, what color is sweetened condensed milk supposed to be?" to which he replied, "Cream color... kind of off white... why?" I said, "Are you sure it's not supposed to be orange?" and he said, "No. Cream color." Hmm. That settled that. I was for sure going to Publix now.

I finished baking the Pumpkin pie with new ingredients and started on the Apple pie, which called for light corn syrup. I KNEW, I JUST KNEW I had some of that, but it flat out disappeared when I went to get it. All I had was dark. So what did I do? I called home.

"Dad, what is the difference between dark and light corn syrup?"
"Nothing."
"Are you sure? I mean why would they have NO difference other than color. It sounds kind of dumb. There isn't any taste difference?"
"Nope, just the color" and then he explains about dark pies and light pies and I ALMOST SAID,"Wait, let me talk to Mom", but then I realized, "Ummm, Dad is the one who does the baking. He would KNOW this."

So I used the dark and he was right, as he knew he was, and it is just a darker pie.

Within minutes I gather my sister called. My Mom answered and told him he needed to come to the phone. His reply was, "Which daughter is this? The Apple Pie or the Sweet Potato Pie?"

Heh. Evidently we were tag teaming the baking questions today.

Then on my way to Karate today, I had to stop for gas as the traffic here in Palm Beach County is SOOOO bad, they are saying it has NEVER been this bad other than hurricane evacuation. Every major road is torn up for construction and there were wrecks littering the highway. My husband had a buddy from Miami come up for lunch today and on his way home, it took what is normally a 1.5 hour drive, 4.5 hours.

Anyway, so I stopped for gas for fear I would get stuck in some hellish jam and they were out of everything but Premium. I guess everyone is driving somewhere and they were all filling up. My issue was Premium here costs me $2.33 a gallon. Holy crap, Lions tours. I didn't even want to look at the receipt.