"The Devil's In My Kitchen" or "The Misadventures of Cooking"

Before I begin the saga of the kitchen, I'll update my medical problems. I do have a broken finger (actually it's been broken since June 28) and I have torn cartilage in my knee. The painful cortizone shot really helped. I can actually walk today w/o grunting with every step. Next time it pains me, though, I will be going under the knife.

Ok, my kitchen woes........ I'm having a Tea Party tomorrow for my dear friend who's a couple of decades older than me, plus four of her friends, plus three friends my age. We're wearing hats, too. (quit laughing....) Today I did a lot of precooking. There was a dark cloud in my kitchen today. To begin with, I was probably trying to cook too many things at the same time. Mistake numero uno. Then I decided to try Blueberry/Lemon Iced Tea from my Southern Living Magazine. Sounds good, but believe me, not sure it's worth the trouble. It requires cooking a potful of blueberries (and right now those are pretty darn expensive). I decided to make half as much as I would need in case I didn't like the taste - rather than waste those pricey blueberries. The first batch went ok, except I was unaware that my pretty red KitchenAide saucepan would be permanently stained on the OUTSIDE of the pan. There was a long drip mark that made me sad. Then I had to drain the cooked blueberries in a meshed strainer to keep all the gunk out of the tea. What a mess! I had blueberries juice/gunk splattered all over me, my sink, my countertop, my stove, you name it - it had blueberry juice on it. My t-shirt looks like I was stabbed and bled purple (that's another thing - blueberries are actually the color purple). I did indeed like the blueberry/lemon tea so I decided to go ahead and cook another batch. Unfortunately, during the boiling process, my ADD kicked in. I walked into my dining room and ZAP I completely forgot the blueberries. My sweet daughter called while I was away from the kitchen. As I often do, I walked around the house while I talked with her. I probably caused her some hearing damage from my screams when I found the pot over boiling with blueberries! I had blueberry juice all over two eyes of the stove not to mention in the drip pans and also below the cooktop. Jeepers. What a mess. Of course, I could not clean up until everything cooled down - including my temper. Now my saucepan has blueberry stains almost completely covering the outside of it. It looks horrible. So I go on to the next project........cooking fried green tomatoes, as an experiment for tomorrow's tea party. Someone, who shall remain anonymous but I'm married to him, tilted the cooking oil bottle when last used (causing oil to collect in the large screw-on lid). As I poured oil into my hot frying pan, I spilled oil all over the remaining two clean eyes of my cooktop, drip pans and below the drip pans. I tried to clean up the oil before it started a fire and I burned my index finger (the opposite hand from my broken finger). Man, oh man, was I frustrated. I finished the fried green tomatoes w/o any fire alarms going off and they were quite good so I will keep them on tomorrow's menu.
Thank goodness my sweet daughter (the one who's hard of hearing in one ear) invited us to supper tonight. It was a relief to leave my possessed kitchen and go to a sane kitchen to eat. Supper was very delicious. Good time had by all. Then I returned to the Kitchen from Hades. Next up was a dessert that required a cooked chocolate topping. Of course, I had to clean up my blueberry mess and my spilled cooking oil mess before I could use my stove. That took a while, believe me. So I was getting the chocolate topping ready to heat up. I used my whisk to stir it all together. I propped it on the side of my saucepan, turned my back and the whisk flew out of the pan with sugar and chocolate flying everywhere and fell on the rug that my dear husband had just vacuumed. To make it worse, I hated that chocolate topping b/c it was bitter. I tossed it out and started over with another recipe. Right now I venting on my blog before I burn my kitchen down . . .on purpose.