Cooking in Bulk

I love to cook. I love spending the afternoon in the kitchen, chopping and slicing and mixing and baking. It is just so rare that I have that kind of time. But today I did, and since we were having Adam's family over for dinner, it seemed like a good time to do that. There had been a request for my chile rellenos, which I happily set to work making. It's an easy enough meal for 4, I figured it couldn't be that hard to scale it up for 8. Everything was going fine until I actually set to work with the frying. The first batch came out well, so I set to work on the second batch. A little smoky, but still looked like they were turning out ok. Then went to finish up the third batch, and was out of batter. Hmmm, do we just go with the ones I've made so far, or whip up some more batter? Since the batter only consisted of egg whites and flour, I decided to make more batter. Quickly, since I was working with a pan of hot oil. So I dumped the egg whites in the bowl of the Kitchen Aid, turned it to high and realized the oil on the stove behind me was burning. I pulled that off the burner, but suddenly a large puff of smoke started emanating from the burner. Luckily, I had removed the batteries from our smoke alarm last time I set something on fire in the kitchen and I didn't see any flames, so we were fine. I headed back to check on my egg whites and noted that nothing had happened. There were no peaks forming, just foamy egg whites. I had not bothered to rinse out the bowl before putting the new batch of egg whites in, and it seems the yolks from the last batch were prohibiting my egg whites from forming peaks. Sigh. At this point I'm on the verge of losing it, because once again my oil is on fire, I have a dozen chile rellenos getting cold, and I was supposed to be impressing people with my cooking prowess. Luckily, Adam's mom swept in to save the day. She rinsed out the bowl, put some new egg whites in to whip and within a few minutes, I had finished up the last of the chile rellenos. Without burning anything down.

I am told they were good, but I didn't think they were my best. Too much batter, not enough cheese. I did however make strawberry shortcake for dessert, and that was, as always, delicious.

Lesson learned. Chile rellenos are not meant to be made in bulk. Next time we cook for the family, we will be making hot dogs.