Newlywed Cooking mishap #57: The Monkey Bread Debacle

Since getting married, I have been trying my hand in the kitchen in attempts to improve my cooking/baking skills. Much to the continued amusement of SJY, I have been more like a worthless Paris Hilton in the kitchen than the Giada De Laurentiis vibe I was going for. First there were the chocolate chip cookies that I made with course sea salt because I didn't have any fine-grained cooking salt. I figured, salt is salt, right? Wrong. The salt didn't absorb evenly into the cookie dough, instead every 3 bites or so, unfortunate taste testers would suddenly get a burst of waaay-to-salty nastiness. They were so bad I actually threw out the entire batch...SJY tried to fight me on it, but I'm pretty sure he was just desperate for a cookie.
There were also the chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that somehow came out as crispy as a triscuit, the banana bread that required an electric knife for slicing, the hockey puck yeast rolls...I mean, the list is endless, people. I've been insisting that I'm still getting used to a gas oven, but I think SJY is convinced there are bigger issues at hand.
Nonetheless, tonight was a mishap for the record books. I made yeast rolls for Easter lunch yesterday, and today decided to make monkey bread out of the leftover dough. I defrosted the extra dough all day, got a recipe off Cookinglight.com and anticipated the accolades I would receive for my award-deserving monkey bread. Keeping in mind all of the 'issues' I seem to be having in the kitchen (and the fact that I'd never actually made monkey bread before) I followed the recipe word for word.
The timer dinged, I pulled the soft, warm monkey bread out of the oven, and let SJY have the inaugural bite. I should have anticipated his immediate look of horror...

SJY: Ugh, this tastes like straight-up alcohol.
me: That's impossible--it's monkey bread! I told you this gas oven is unreliable!!
SJY: We could get full and drunk at the same time!
me: (sigh)

I took a bite and, sure enough, it tasted like I had just tossed back a shot of really nasty cough-syrup-flavored booze. I couldn't even hold back a grimace. I guess all the dough, sugar and yeast somehow combusted to make an alcoholic...umm...beverage?
In spite of another unsuccessful evening in the kitchen, I remain upbeat. I'm pretty sure I just created SJY's new favorite food: alcohol-infused-yeast-bread--his two favorite flavors melded into one. Although he currently won't go near the monkey bread, I'm sure that with a little tweaking, I could totally make it not taste like poison. I just need a little time...and an Easy-Bake oven.

Miss Dottie: after

So, it seems that the dog grooming industry has become one of the biggest rip-offs that I can currently think of (second only to the ridiculous amounts of money that I have to pay in order to park my car in the city of Seattle, but that's another story). The cheapest haircut SJY and I could find for Miss Dottie was $40! That's more than I currently pay for a haircut (that may be hard to believe...but I've got connections), so SJY and I decided to buy a dog grooming kit for $40 and we figured that we'd get approximately 230 haircuts for Miss Dottie for the price of one at Petsmart.
Unfortunately, we soon figured out why sometimes it's just better to pay someone to do something rather than to attempt to do it yourself. We did OK on her body and legs, but somehow left her with a huge mustache and a Brazilian. Poor thing. Less than 3 minutes after we finished the 'haircut' she let us know what she thought of our work by taking a big whizz on the living room carpet. We really couldn't blame her for that one.
We're still not convinced that a $40 haircut is the way to go. SJY is convinced that our dog grooming skills will only improve with time. However, I'm afraid that if we continue to traumatize her, we'll have to shell out the big bucks to the freakin' dog whisperer or something. We'll see.
For now, here's what Miss D looks like. I still think she looks cute. Kind of. But I love her, and love is blind. Thank God.