Quick! A Recipe Switch-up: The Falafel Debacle or Flour Fail

Last night's attempt at making felafel was a fail. Honestly, I really don't know what went wrong.

I used to make falafel after right after college, when I briefly had a place with some old friends. Sometimes the mixture would be runnier than other times, but never have I had the mixture completely dissolve into the oil, like last night.

I roughly followed the recipe I had scratched out. I say roughly because I had forgotten to write down some units of measure (i.e. 1/3 cilantro...c'mon Past Becky, 1/3 of what?), so I just kind of guessed at what I meant.

The mixture had a pretty great consistency, so I was pretty encouraged. I'm fairly sure this is what I remembered from the last time I used this recipe, 4 years ago.

So, I had the oil all heated up. I grabbed my tablespoon, a bit of the mixture, and started adding it to the oil. I got about 6 falafel balls in when I realized....they are browning, they're melting! All of the falafel mixture I had just put in was dissolving into the oil.

The oil with all of the disintegrated felafel

I'm still kind of baffled as to what happened. I heated the oil to 350F...all I can think is that I didn't have the right consistency and it needed more flour to bind it all.

The goopy, oily mess

So, instead of trying to cook them up  in the oil, I just decided to bake the rest of the mixture and make "burgers". These were in the oven at 350 for what felt like forever. It was easily an hour. Honestly, I didn't really time it, I just kept an eye on them.

I brought two of them for lunch the next day, and they went straight in the trash. they were soggy and didn't taste good at all.

I didn't work out so well for me this time. I've been lucky to not have my cooking disasters so far, but they do happen.

Quick! Before I Forget: An Announcement!

So....This happened!

Saturday morning Jeff proposed!! I'm excited beyond words. I knew we would eventually get married, but he definitely caught me off guard, since I didn't think he'd be proposing for quite some time.

We woke up kind of early on Saturday morning, which is especially unusual for me. Jeff had woke up and gone into the living room, but he accidentally dropped something...and with our bedroom wall being super thin, I was jolted awake at the loud noise. (come to find out, this was the ring box! haha, oops). 

I had planned on us going to the farmer's market that was opening for the season that morning. It started at 10 and I was hoping to leave right around then. Jeff hadn't been feeling well the night before, and he said he still wasn't feeling so hot, so could we wait a bit longer? Of course! I didn't want to make him go if he wasn't feel well...I even considered going by myself. Good thing I didn't! 

I was standing in the kitchen, and I had left my phone in the bedroom. Jeff had gone in there and when he came back he said I had a missed call and handed me my phone. It was from my sister, and she had also left me this text message:

 

I love talking to my nephew, so I of course called her right back. We got on the Skype and I honestly did not suspect a thing. It wasn't until we had been on Skype for a little while that Cam says, "Aunt Becky, I have artwork for you!", and he runs off camera. "You do?! I love Cam artwork!" I said. Moments later my sister is moving the Ipad to show him holding up this:

My jaw dropped. It's mostly a blur, but I was sitting on the couch and I remember that as soon as Cam told me he had artwork for me, that Jeff left the room. I think my thoughts turned to "he's not feeling well, he probably needed to get up for a minute", but then I saw the poster on the screen and started cracking up with nervous laughter and crying, and at the same time also thinking, "This can't be for real, they're joking with me, where's Jeff?"

My sister said, "Can you see it??", and when I said yes, Jeff came back into the room, holding the ring's black box, and walked towards me. As he got to the couch he got down on one knee and asked me the question himself. I was still laughing/crying and pretty speechless that I just hugged him and made him sit next to me on the couch, and he was just like, "well??", and I finally was able to say, "YES!"

It was perfect. I am so, so happy to have a man that knows how much my family means to me and chose to include them. He has been telling me that I would be the first to know, so I think that is why I was not at all expecting a proposal via Skype!.

Jeff tells me that he actually was feeling better, but that he had been texting with my sister all morning and needed to stall. She had said that my brother-in-law was out doing errands and wouldn't be back until 10ish, but that was when I wanted to go to the farmer's market! It's a good thing I didn't insist on going alone!

Quick! A Home Decor Update

Living in an apartment, like most people who do, I like making little changes were we can. The front door is one of those changes, that while I can't change the color, I can add a nice wreath depending on the season.

I don't have any action shots of the making-process of this March wreath, and this isn't the best shot in the world, but it's one that I am certainly super proud of and I just had to show it off!

The letters for 'Lucky' ended up being from the scrap booking aisle. Since they were stickers, I added some paper to the back of them before hot-gluing them to the wreath. The flowers are fake ones, making this a wreath I can use every year.

Welcome to my blog!

Like a lot of other women, I'm always looking through Pinterest and the tons of blogs that I read. And, alot of the times, I like to try out what I've seen for myself.

I'm hugely into DIY; there really aren't many things that can fall under the DIY category that I don't like. Often times, especially when I'm cooking, I start out with a recipe and end up changing it as I go. Sometimes it's just a little, and sometimes it's a lot. And the same can go for anything I'm working on, whether that be a pattern I'm knitting up, a home project, etc.

This is my little space where, in addition to posts about the fun things my boyfriend and I end up doing, I'd like to post about things I'm working on, and, Quick! Before I Forget: jot down any changes that I've made along the way.

Thanks for stopping by!

Becky