I should get my own Food Network series: "The Blind Feeding the Blind"

What's a good toy for a nine-month-old kitten? If you said "stale muffin," you win! She's currently batting it about the kitchen. It's a very bad muffin. Blueberries make you evil.

Tonight I made heart-attack bread pudding, which involves 11 eggs, a pint of whipping cream, a pint and a half of half-and-half, and an accidental overdose of white chocolate. (It was supposed to be six bricks, but eight fell out of the package and I didn't notice until I'd chopped them up. What can you really do with an extra half cup of white chocolate shavings?) If it turns out, I'll be taking half of it to work tomorrow, and giving half to someone I hate. Eleven eggs!

I have to say, I'm not the world's greatest cook, and I suspect this is because I have no problem with fudging recipes. (There's a joke in "fudging," but I can't quite find it. Make your own, you lazy bastard.) I read somewhere that the secret to being a good cook is careful measurement. Oh, wait, that's making good coffee. Um, good chef...oh, right, sharp knife. Well, I've got that, so really, I just need to start obeying the damn recipes. For example, tonight's bread pudding is a mish-mash of three different recipes, plus I sort of adjusted it based on what I thought would work. One recipe called for three cups of sugar on top of the white chocolate, and really, I thought that was overkill. Like, let's aim for death after work and not during. I cut it back to two cups, but upped the eggs by three so the whites could do their congealing thing and hold everything together. Yes, this is seriously how my mind works. Julia Child spins in her grave; my mother the food scientist is writing me out of her will.

Shit!

Sorry, as I was writing it occurred to me that I had forgotten to put the cinnamon on top of the bread pudding, so I had to rush off to the kitchen to do that. Of course, I was too lazy to take them out of the oven (I say "them" because it's in two 8x8 casseroles), so now one pudding has entirely too much cinnamon on top. Give me a break; they're in water baths and I only have one potholder. I know, sad story.

So, will this recipe work? No friggin' idea. It wouldn't be my first disaster in a pan, and nor, I suspect, my last. The thing is, when I enter the kitchen, my common sense seems to go right out the door. Can I catch an egg with my knee against a the cabinet? Sure, great idea! Thank god my mother has IM. She fields all the stupid questions that result from my lack of culinary common sense, like when I asked her if I could start a fire in the oven with water. I've asked her all sorts of things, like what's the difference between cheese and milk and how do you know when cantaloupe is ripe and what the hell is wrong with my chicken? (Renin, salt, and active cultures; thump and smell; you're cooking it at too high a temperature stop cooking everything on high for the love of all that's holy.) The woman knows that I am minus the cooking gene, believe me.

Although, I will say, I did get the gravy gene. According to my mom and her friend Pat, good gravy is genetic. My mom makes fantastic gravy; Pat can barely make gravy with a mix. (This is her secret shame, because somehow she's the only woman in her family without the gene.) I discovered last time I (over)cooked a pot roast that I, also, can make a good gravy with little to no effort. I'll tell you the secret, but it will honestly do you no good if you don't have the gene. The secret is this: don't stop whisking. Put in your thickening agent while you're whisking the broth, and don't stop whisking until you take the whole mess off the stove.

Oh, thickening agent. (Last thing, because I have to go get the bread pudding out of the oven in a minute.) How great a product would this be: milkfat in a jar. I know, it sounds gross, but it is the most practical idea I've had in weeks. Okay, here's the thing. My "recipe" tonight called for half-and-half, whole milk, and whipping cream. That is far too many milk products to have to buy, especially since I walked to the grocery store to get this stuff. If I could just buy skim milk and a jar of milkfat, I could mix it in the correct proportions to get all these things, no? I know, I'm a genius.

Update, 11:45 p.m.: I am a genius (slash idiot savant). The bread pudding is awesome and also deadly. Recipe tomorrow.