Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Something to Offer Up

So I had gathered ingredients and found an easy version of the hot and sour soup I enjoy at the local Chinese buffet.  I added the ingredients one by one and it was  starting to smell good (to me,that is. The kids hate mushrooms and will be eating something different for dinner.) Last came thickening the broth with a mixture of cornstarch and water.

As I poured this in, the soup startled  me by foaming and rising up in the pot, and almost spilling out. "That's weird," I thought. "Almost like one of those  science experiments where you mix vinegar and baking powder....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! I put baking powder  instead of cornstarch in my soup!"

An easy mistake to make, since the brand of my baking  powder was Argo. Yes, the cornstarch folks make baking powder too, and I recently bought it because it is one of the few brands that doesn't contain aluminum.
More's the pity--the soup tasted pretty good, except for the strong  after taste of baking powder.

Not up there, I know, with losing my home to a tidal wave.God knows that would probably be too much for me. So instead he just lets me live with the results of my scatterbrained-ness.  And there's  one more tiny scrap to place on the altar.