Sometimes you make the recipe...

...and sometimes the recipe makes you kick and scream and curse.

Don't get me wrong, the Fairy Queen loves to cook. An afternoon making lovely things from scratch sounds perfect. IF, that is, the lovely things turn out somewhere in the vicinity of lovely. Several hours of attention and care and ingredients that turn into nasty swill, however, turn the FQ into a cursing sailor.

Take a recent Sunday, for example. After a wonderful morning of provisioning:

• Farmer's market for mushrooms, tomatoes (!), cider, pears, and local sweet potatoes
• Spice store for pomegranete molasses and korean chili threads (future kimchi)
• Urban homestead store for a new canning pot rack - check back for the ranty post on this topic
• lunch at the most sublime dive bar ever

...we returned home for dog play and cooking. On the docket were granola, ricotta, and yogurt. The first two were to come from a new DIY book Phrodaux found at the library. I've been reading it and loving the tone, the author's sidebar stories, the whole vibe of the thing.

But #$&*(#$&*(#$&(*#$&*(.

These recipes do not work.

Granola: Instead of golden, toasty, and ready to be broken into chunks, mine was DARK brown, burned smelling, and ultimately just a big pan of oats with a few minor distractions.

Ricotta: This was the tantrum inducer. After a really long time on low heat, we finally reached 175 degrees. Then, per the instructions, it was time to turn the heat up and watch the pan as it "looked ready to erupt" but "should not boil."

Hmm. It almost immediately boiled. And definitely started to erupt, 18 inch high spurts of hot lemony milk, a geyser in my kitchen. Every time, I screeched. At some point I reached in to adjust the thermometer just as a major eruption shot into the air but encountered my arm instead. While flinging my arm away (fire hot!) I also managed to fling the thermometer into the air and across the kitchen.

So, let us recap: lousy recipe + milk burns + broken glass = fairy queen tantrum (and no yogurt, as it too requires a thermometer and mine looked like this:

Don't zoom in! The debris is unnecessarily filthy, as I'd swept it up with the rest of the dog/kitchen dirt before deciding to photograph it. Really, trust me. Don't zoom.

For my efforts, I got about a cup of this. Big whooping deal. Ricotta is not that special and not that expensive. I'm buying mine next time.

After the FQ meltdown, Phrodaux took over: soothing words, icy cocktail, homemade pizza, assurances that we really could buy ricotta next time. And vows that if I followed through on my threat (Burn this book! Pay the library!), he would still stand by me.  Ah, love.