W(h)ine, W(h)ine,W(hine)

My quest to acquire cooking skills continues.

I’ve learned much through trial and error and if practice makes perfect, I should be ready for Top Chef any day now. But seriously: I’ve improved.

Really.

I’m not a fan of recipes as it seems I always rush through, mess up some measurement, or completely skip an ingredient. And end up feeling stupid. But recently I decided to try something new: a simple (?) recipe for sauce to put on steak. It seemed easy enough and I even had all the ingredients on hand… except for a bottle of wine.

 

I’m not a drinker. Never have been, never will be. So for me to buy alcohol is a big deal. I carefully noted the exact kind and off to the store I went.

Who would have thought that Wal-Mart would have fifty different kinds of wine? I must have stood there for at least twenty minutes, but finally put my hands on the right one and left feeling pleased as punch (so to speak.)

 

So I get home and start to prepare the recipe until I ran into my first stumbling block: the bottle had a cork.

For those rolling their eyes, give me a break: it’s probably the first bottle of wine I’ve opened since Boone’s Farm back in high school.

Of course I have no cork screw and reached for my iPhone instead. A few Googled minutes later, I had a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a screw poised for cork removal greatness. I carefully tightened the screw into the cork then tugged on it with the pliers.

 

Chortling with glee when the cork started to unwedge, the pliers slipped (not once but twice) and pinched my finger full force, creating a lovely blood blister-type wound.

Eventually the cork came out and soon the sauce simmered while I multi-tasked a sweet potato and prepped mushrooms for pan frying like an old pro.

By now I was feeling pretty cocky…until I noticed that the burner on the stove top wasn’t pre-heating properly…because I had turned on the wrong one.

A stack of potholders was on the verge of bursting into flames, but fortunately, I was able to snatch them up just in time. (No burns were incurred in the making of this meal.)

Dinner turned out pretty good despite the drama and the sauce? It was okay.

Next time I’ll stick to Heinz 57.