Ouch!

As I type this post, I am in pain. Last night, while cooking four delicious recipes, I mangled my hand in two kitchen-related mishaps. Here’s what happened:

The recipe for pasta and roasted vegetables called for 1 pound of fresh vegetables, so I began chopping away at some peppers, tomatoes, onions, and zucchini. At some point during the cutting (I think during the zucchini), I sliced open the tip of the middle finger on my right hand. I didn’t notice it until I began to slice the onion, and the juices of the onion caused an awful burning sensation in the cut.

The second slice came while I was grating some cheddar cheese for the chicken divan recipe. Now that I purchased a cheese grater specifically for my 40-day recipe challenge, I’ve given up on buying packages of pre-grated cheese. Instead, I’m grating my own. That was my first mistake. My second was attempting to continue grating an already small chunk of cheddar cheese. There’s a certain point, in seems, in the cheese grating process where the grater should just give up on grating any of the cheese that’s left. I did not give up. My thumb slipped off the tiny chunk of cheese that was left and right into one of the holes on the grater.

The picture doesn’t really do justice to the extent of my injuries. They are much more annoying and painful than they seem.

Here’s a quick recap of my cooking experiment by the numbers:

• 23 recipes finished
• Nine recipes behind schedule as of Thursday
• Two kitchen injuries
• Seven kitchen tools or items purchased for the cooking (a mixing bowl, a cheese grater, two ice cube trays, and three whisks)
• $13 per dish is the average cost for the recipes (that seems high, but each dish serves about four people or more)
• Approximately 25 hours spent in the kitchen preparing the meals
• 12 different happy customers for various meals

No plans for a big meal tonight, but tomorrow morning my coworkers can enjoy some muffins:

Oatmeal-blueberry muffins

• One egg
• 1/4 cup of salad oil
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of quick-cooking oats
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of soda
• 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 3/4 cup of frozen blueberries, thawed

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together egg, oil, milk, and sugar. Add flour, oats, baking powder, salt, soda, and cinnamon. Mix into a smooth batter, and fold in the blueberries. Fill greased muffin tins two-thirds full. Bake for 20 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of the tins to get the muffins out.

This recipe makes 10 to 12 muffins.