Cooking Nightmares

This weekend was kind of a bust.  Sunday, Beth had to bail on me (no cute kid pics for the blog and even worse, no hang out time with Beth!!)  Monday I picked up some over time at work.  As I was leaving (around 10:30 at night), the elevator opened and this:

Creepy vacuum just hanging out by itself in the elevator.  Then I get to the garage and the elevator door opens again and BAM:

Second creepy vacuum hanging out right outside of the elevator.  If this had been a horror movie, it would have been the beginning of the end.  Thank goodness his this is real life.

Tuesday as my cooking day, and what a nightmare!  Monday night, when I got home around 11/11:30 I took a 7 lb chicken out of my freezer and into the fridge to thaw.  Tuesday I got up and the chicken was still mighty frozen.  I put it in a cold water bath to help unfreeze it:

I replaced the water every half hour for 2 hours.  The outside seemed thawed enough, but the inside and the giblets inside were completely frozen.  Since I was going to put it in the crockpot, I needed to get it going if I wanted it cooked before midnight!

I called dad (the fixer of all problems) and he said to run some hot water in the area where the giblets are:

Skip forward 20 minutes of hot water and digging with a fork (which gave it's life for a good cause):

I finally got the giblets out.  The grosses thing was that the giblets came out in bits and pieces.  The chicken neck was in with the giblets and came out one vertebrae at a time (EWWWWWW!!!!)

Anyway, I finally got it de-gibleted and seasoned and in the crock pot

Next was cupcakes with Brown Sugar frosting.  The brown sugar frosting did NOT turn out.  I mean, it was edible, but it was more of a glaze.

So I took my cupcakes

and dipped them in the glaze:

and they turned out like this:

and this:

Turns out it was a better caramel than icing:

Sigh...Nothing turned out great today!!  Oh well.  Can't win them all!

Now onto the topic of much small talk, the weather.  So crazy.  Monday night it was in the 50's!  Tuesday it cooled down but it looked like this outside:

And then wednesday I woke up and looked outside and THIS:

Hahaha.  Classic Cleveland. Next weekened should be awesome!  I'm finally meeting Rich's Mom and Dad!