I Heart My Cabinet Shop

Get this! I hardly ever get personal emails, then this morning I got one from Mom AND one from Dad! :)

Mom sent me this email about Agape love today, was really good, thinkin bout posting it just because it was cool.

And Pop's was tellin me about needing a template for a cross to put on a casket he was building yesterday, then he found the template for a celtic cross I had made when I was making liquor cabs for my bro and me last year :) *sigh* I really do miss working in the cabinet shop... It's so...it's just amazing. It's so relaxing on a Saturday to be out there working on my own project, no one else there to make lots of noise. Granted, sometimes I'd coax my sis out there just because :-P

But really, it's awesome being out there in the shop alone,when I'm the only one making noise out there. The radio is set to the music of the day, the big garage door is open in the earlier morning when there's a cool breeze...when the door is opened, the sound of the air compressor that comes on at least every 30mins is muffled.... Still, there is a certain comfortable easy embalming silence that reigns when I'm there. I can hear my thoughts and the sound of a screw going into the wood....

I miss being able to just go out to the shop and grab the drills, the batter powered mini skill saw (so awesome, the one's by Makita!) or whatever else I needed to build a box for a present, make a backboard for a poster, make a shelf to go above my washer and dryer because, frankly, the builders of my rental place were pathetically cheap and completely inefficient or, my absolute favorite thing I've ever built and am most proud of, make a wine/liquor cabinet because I felt like it!

Those cabinets...just...wow! They are GORGEOUS! and I only have two crumby little pics from my phone of them! When I moved here to KS, I only brought what would fit in my car, thus, my cabinet is sitting royal estate in what my family likes to refer to as "the princess room" .... yes...that would be my old room! lol.

Anyhow, I started makin the wine cab for my bro, then only partway done I was getting jealous and I'd already told him I was makin it for him.... So I just put his on hold for a few days and started on another for me, brought it up to speed with the first.

Of all things I've built or made, I am most proud of those two cabinets that I made. And the brother I made one of them for (the one pictured, actually) is one of the most amazing men I know. He is the kindest husband and father that I've seen. Love you bro!

Flamin'..er...Bloomin' Onion Anyone?!

Okay, so I got a Green Tea Latte/frappe fix today, ordered some mix off of Amazon, good stuff by the way! Lol, let me know if you want some, I'll point ya in the right direction! Oh yeah, back to my story.... 

So after my Green Tea Latte and workin out in the yard for a little bit, I came back in and suddenly decided that I wanted to make a Bloomin' Onion, ya know, like at Outback Steakhouse. I have no bloody clue why on earth I suddenly decided such a thing.... Haven't had one for a long time since when I was back home in the Idaho...nor have I seen anything to suggest the Outback, so anyhow, I took it as very odd, but Googled "how to make a bloomin onion". ...I went through their steps, though I added more ketchup to the dipping sauce and I didn't cut the onion quite like they said to, but it turned out way better than how they were sayin I should do it.

Anyhow, I cut it almost to the root end, and then turned the knife vertical and sliced to the roots that way as well to make the onion bloom without havin to put it in boiling water then cold water like the recipes said. So after I was done cutting, it looked like this: 

Which was pretty cool. Then came the interesting part....

I had a medium sauce pan for the oil, and had it half full, enough to just cover most of the onion I figured... So I put it on the stove (which is a flat glass top), had it on for awhile, so I think it was a little on the too hot side

when I went to put my battered onion in...well...let me tell you...one should have a bigger pot/taller pot when ya'll put a bloomin onion into hot hot oil....

I dipped the onion into the pan, and it started boiling...OUT of the pot! Lol! My face had to have been a Kodak moment! LOL! I stepped back in shock for a moment, didn't want to have exploding oil on me or anything, then I realized it was just going to boil, much like hot water..but it was pouring out all over the stove top...so I picked up the pot to move it off the burner, stop the boiling over. Then as I stood there holding the pan over the stove wondering how on earth I was going to clean up the mess I made in my shear brilliance, it started to smoke! I breathed a quick thanks that the evil smoke detector wasn't in the kitchen anymore. Well, I shouldna been saying a thanks so quickly, I was suddenly standing in shocked horror as the oil burst into flames!

So I'm standing there for a split moment in shock watching as the flames floated over the oil, grabbed the pot off so I wouldn't have a flamin' onion, then grabbed the bottle of oil since the flames started to spread all over the bloody top! So I'm standing there with a pot in one hand and wondering how I'm going to put it out as I have no extinguisher or anything! I thought, "Maybe a towel to smother it? No, bad idea, could start on fire then what would I do?!" Stood there a moment longer and the flames got higher and wider and black smoke was everywhere! So I thought, "Okay, I've got nothin left, I'll try blowing on it..." Thank goodness it worked! I took two breaths and blew it out! Lol. So yeah, that was pretty interesting! :-P lol. 

So after the flames were out, I noted that my onion was still cookin even off the burner.... Didn't look half bad either! 

Yum Yum :-) It tasted just like from Outback :-) Most enjoyable.