breadcrumbs

So I’m getting into cooking. I mean, I look at recipes and get excited about trying to make them (trying being the operative word). Tonight, I made chicken croquettes.

Having looked at the recipe yesterday before Kev and I went shopping for the next two weeks’ worth of groceries, I thought I was completely prepared for… everything. Come to find out, I don’t have breadcrumbs. It wasn’t listed in the ingredients. (COME ON! Way to set me up for failure, cookbook!) Is that just an understood, then? That every cook EVER in the entire world obviously has breadcrumbs, might as well not mention it until the second to last step in the recipe? Regardless, I soldiered on. Psh, I can make my own breadcrumbs! How hard could it be?

First, I tried crumbling up some bread into a bowl. …Nah, didn’t look right. Next, I utilized the toaster and then crumbled it up. Hmm. I added the first “batch” to the second and threw them all onto a pan and stuck it in the oven with some seasoning and a little bit of oil. I thought that was foolproof. Till I got distracted. Luckily, the smoke alarm went off to alert me to the fact that my breadcrumbs were… done. I picked out - from among the burnt-beyond-recognition tidbits - the morsels of bread that could still be used. Meh. It’ll have to suffice.

Next, the white sauce (“flour + milk + butter” sounds simple enough, right?) took me three tries to get just right. On the third try, I realized I just needed to wait maybe two minutes longer before giving up on it thickening. Haha.

The end result, I’ll have you know, was quite delicious! Even if you just chalk up the success to Mrs Dash and more chicken than was necessary, I am pretty pleased with myself. Pretty pleased indeed. :)