So as you know I’m on a journey to create a healthier life with simpler ingredients for myself and my family. The desire to cut things out started years ago but being on maternity leave for the past 4 months has really got me looking at what I put in and on my body; and since I have to be home anyways I might as well put nap times to good use. But like all learning experiences your bound to have some experiments not go as smoothly as you’d like them to.
One such experiment was my attempt at homemade potato and sweet potato chips. It sounded like a super simple snack I should be able to whip up in no time at all. I had a Pampered Chef microwave chip maker that says it makes chips in 3 minutes! Just slice em up and sprinkle with a bit of salt. How could I go wrong?!
So chips are cut, seasoned and in the microwave and my chip maker doesn’t fit on my microwaves turn table!! First fail, chip maker can’t spin so chips don’t cook in 3 minutes. After 15 minutes of manually rotating the chips every minute or so and they still weren’t crunchy I decided to abandoned the device and try finishing my chips in the oven. You can do that right??
I quickly read half a recipe, spread my remaining chips on a cookie sheet, preheated my oven and threw them in setting my timer for 15 minutes. Most experienced cooks know that when you put a new recipe in the oven for the first time you can’t just set a timer and walk away. Well I am not an experienced cook and with a 4 month old in the house, standing in the kitchen for an un-interrupted 15 minutes is not a likely option. So of course I walked away and came back when my timer went off. Fail number two. What did I come back too? Somehow each chip was burnt on one half and still raw on the other. So I turned the oven way down removed the completely burnt chips, flipped the others over trying to salvage them. Set another timer and walked away again; coming back to absolutely no change. It was as if I had had them sitting on the counter for the past 10 minutes. So another flip, another temperature adjustment and another timer. This time when my timer goes off I find a few more completely burnt pieces and some pieces that actually looked like potato chips! I’ll call that as close as it’s going to get!
So though my finished product was not exactly a Pinterest win. I had managed to achieve a little bit of everything with this first attempt at homemade chips; some pieces were completely unsalvagable, some ended up edible and still others were half burnt and half chewy.
I’m marking down this healthy snack making attempt as a learning experience.
Lesson #1:
If your only going to read one recipe before attempting something make sure you read the whole thing and then actually follow it,
Lesson #2:
its probably just best to check multiple references before attempting and
Lesson #3:
if at all possible do not attempt time sensitive recipes while home alone with an infant unless you are 100% sure you can finish the whole thing before nap time is over.
naturessence 