RHUBARB, RHUBARB, RHUBARB

 

I've had a bit of a disaster today on the home cooking front.

This morning, after dropping The Old Girl off at work as it was raining heavily, I shopped at the supermarket on the way home. Picking up some fruit and vegetables I spied some rhubarb and bought a stack of it. I like stewed rhubarb on breakfast cereal or in a fruit sponge.

At home I later cleaned and chopped the rhubarb stems, put them in a large saucepan with a few tablespoons of water and a few teaspoons of sugar, put the lid on, set to cook at a medium heat and ... forgot about it.

A half hour or so later I wondered about the cooking smells and remembered the rhubarb. I found that the saucepan had almost boiled dry and that burnt rhubarb was stuck to the bottom. At some stage the mixture had boiled over and rhubarb 'sauce' had coated the outside and bottom of the saucepan... and the SMEG induction cooktop. Bummer.

I salvaged a couple of small containers of the stewed rhubarb (at the top) and set about cleaning up the mess. The mess was sticky and rapidly hardening so I scraped (with a plastic spatula) what I could from the bottom of the pan and then rinsed it and have left to soak in a 'bath' of bleach, detergent and water.

I wiped down the cooktop with warm water and a bit of detergent and then gently used the plastic spatula to scrape away the crusted rhubarb juice. Fortunately I had only used a couple of teaspoons of sugar in the mixture so it's not like concrete. I got it all off to my standard but ... my standards in no way reach The Old Girl's very high and exacting standards. I'm in trouble. What could further go wrong?

The saucepan! It's a Jamie Oliver one that she likes. She likes it very much unfortunately. I looked at it again and, even while squinting my eyes it still looked bad. Bummer again. I looked up the Briscoes website to see about buying a replacement. They are out of stock of this 3.2 quart model. To make things worse even smaller ones start at $300 each!

I then looked at the cooktop and "even while squinting my eyes it still looked bad". Bummer for the third time.

I looked up 'cleaning induction cooktops' on the internet and came across a 'recipe' of a mixture of baking soda and water that can be gently rubbed on to the offending area. I'm going to try that.

While on-line I looked up 'cleaning saucepans of burnt fruit' and again found a 'recipe' of baking soda, detergent and white wine vinegar that can be heated in the pot. I'm going to try that after its bleach bath.

Why do these things happen to me?