I should be planning dinner now, but all I can think about is how hot it is. In addition to the heat, the dew point makes it feel like you’re in a Tennessee Williams play. A bad high school production of a Tennessee Williams play. In the multi-purpose room. All I want to do is fan myself and mutter about Northerners. Which is odd, living in Minnesota, but that’s my point—once the weather becomes this crappy, a sort of Hunter Thompson delirium sets in.

Unpleasant as the weather is, I refuse to follow the lead of local weatherfolk and call it ‘humid-geddon.’ Look, just because something is bad doesn’t mean it’s Eternal Judgement bad. A rough winter is not in fact ‘snowmageddon,’ and not being able to drive on the 405 is not ‘carmageddon.’

My beliefs about the god thing are fairly nebulous, but I’m worried that if we don’t stop equating ‘really big nuisance’ with ‘end of the world,’ an actual God might show us what an actual apocalypse looks like, so we get the difference. Because my God is a God that would do something like that, just to make a point.

I’ve often envied Hindus, because I figure, if you’re gonna believe in what may well be a mythological being, why not believe in a bunch of ‘em? I often think about Hinduism when I’m cooking—if something turns out well, I like to believe a lot of kitchen demigods and goddesses were involved. Unfortunately, even divine intervention wouldn’t have helped prevent the following kitchen disaster.

For a little context, you need to know that after the last dinner I cooked, I really put it all together. Nifty little wine-poached chicken breasts on a bed of perfectly fluffy couscous with steamed broccoli florets that looked like the Platonic Ideal of what broccoli should look like. I actually said to The Girlfriend, “Today, I am a chef.” She’s used to me making pronouncements from the kitchen, but they’re usually along the lines of “Shit—I forgot the mushrooms” or “Honey, I need the burn ointment again.” So this was a big deal.

See, everything worked.  I actually did all of my prep before I needed to put things in the skillet; I knew it would be healthy; I made enough for leftovers; I cooked something new (couscous); and it tasted good. It would only be a matter of time before the Food Network called and gave me my own show, “The Culinary Curmudgeon.”

I usually decide what to make based on what’s in the cupboard, and then figure out how to make it. I saw a can of kernel corn that has sat on the shelf for weeks like an unwanted pet in an ASPCA spot, and then, I had the idea. So, emboldened by success, I decide I will make a dessert. With a can of corn.

I google ‘corn dessert’ (how did people cook without computers?), and find something called El Atol de Etole. What’s weird, is I had just mentioned to The Girlfriend how I don’t make traditional Salvadoran corn-based beverages nearly often enough. Anyway, it looked simple and tasty, and don’t forget, I WAS A CHEF! I had this.

I’d show you a picture, but I couldn’t find one in the public domain, so just imagine a creamy yellow egg-noggy looking beverage. The recipe was a breeze—just milk, corn, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon sticks and a pinch of salt. This I can memorize. You start by putting the corn and milk in a food processor. I only have a little one-button wannabe blender, but it works just like a grownup blender (as long as I only need to ‘pulse’ things).

At this point, things get a little hazy. I think I meant to go back to the office and check the recipe, but with it being so easy, and me being so…chef-like, I knew I could handle adding a few other ingredients to the mix.

In with the corn and milk I tossed the sugar, vanilla, salt…and cinammon sticks. APPARENTLY I did something wrong, because after a few normal pulses, I suddenly heard a kind of ‘ka-chonk’ sound, followed by an otherworldly cry of pain from my little blender. And goop was shooting out of a hole in the top. A hole I had never noticed before, but which is apparently there to allow goop to shoot out.

Alright, I say, maybe the cinnamon sticks weren’t supposed to go in. Maybe you can’t, in fact, purée cinnamon sticks with a one-speed three-cup mini-blender from Target. I take the sticks out, and fire her up again. More horrific grinding sounds from within the machine, and I realize it had TRIED to purée cinnamon sticks, leaving lots of little cinnamon sticks mixed in with the goop. Now in my defense, nothing on the machine or its packaging expressly warns against trying to turn sticks into smoothies, and nothing on the jar of cinnamon sticks said “DO NOT PLACE IN TINY MACHINES.”

By this point most of my counters and at least one of our cats was covered in sweet, viscous corn juice and nearly-pureed kernels, and the kitchen looked like a crime scene (“At this point, we believe the suspect leaves clues written in corn…”). All because I had offended the Cooking Gods with my hubris. So, you think you're a chef, mister comedy?

Okay, the gods, and that fact I hadn’t really read the recipe that carefully. After cleaning up the carnage (corn-age? CORNMAGEDDON!), I looked at the recipe I had bookmarked. I see the phrase “will thicken nicely on the stovetop” and I think…stove? I don’t remember using a stove—ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhh I get it! You just put the corn and the milk in the blender—the other stuff you add later!

I gotta admit, the experience humbled me a little. But I learned something very important--that if I find a great recipe, I should read the whole thing, as opposed to just the first paragraph. Maybe print a copy and take it with me into the kitchen. But maybe I just need a bigger blender.