Word from the wise

Quick food related post:

I made roast chicken tonight for the first time since the spring. I love roasted chicken. Juicy and rich and oh so good. Simple and easy.

I was making the gravy and I poured in the cornstarch and water mix to thicken it. It bubbled and foamed which I thought was pretty odd, but it had been a while since I made gravy so I didn't think much about it.

I'm stirring and stirring and the gravy isn't thickening at all. That's also odd. Too odd. I thought to myself - could the cornstarch have gone bad and lose it's thickening power? Not likely. It was only then that I turned to the cornstarch box to give it a look.

Now, in our house we keep the corn starch and the baking soda in their boxes a big ziplock bag so they don't' take on the flavors of the pantry. I had just grabbed the bag and taken out the box. Except it was the wrong box. No wonder the gravy foamed!

What to do now? Is it ruined? What would baking soda do to gravy? I quickly add the cornstarch and let it thicken before taking a tentative taste. Yuck - it tasted like salty chickeny soap. Different methods are going through my head about fixing it - the best one I could think of to neutralize the baking soda was vinegar. I poured in a couple of glugs of a some nice cider vinegar and watched the foam rise again. I take another tentative taste. No dice, now it tastes like acidic salty chickeny soap.

We ate out chicken, carrots, squash and tomatoes without gravy tonight. It was still good.

Aside 1: I just found out my grandmother has contracted West Nile in southern Manitoba. Prayers would be appreciated.

Aside 2: Take a gander at my flickr page - the photos I took this past weekend turned out pretty good.