I'M BAAAAAAAAAACK (and pretty rusty, so be patient)

   Hello

   Let me catch you up so we can continue:

   I'm no longer teaching lang arts at a suburban high school.
   I'm now teaching theatre at an urban high school. 
   I'm directing the musical at said urban high school.
   I'm also directing a musical at an engineering college.

   Now you're caught up!

   Today's rant is about air fryers. If one is not a person who cooks, anyway, the Keto diet is a challenge. I managed, somehow, to function on this diet for almost nine months and I lost 25 pounds. I do, however, doubt it was the food or my body "achieving Ketosis"-I never did the pee in a cup test, so I can neither confirm nor deny such a claim, but more likely it was due to my own inability to function in the kitchen. There was a lot of stuffed, baked chicken and Keto pizzas. I think of Goldie Hawn in Seems Like Old Times in her robe, hair askew, surrounded by dogs on the floor and pots on the stove trying desperately to replicate Aurora's chicken pepperoni. When asked how it's going she says "The dogs are half dead from tasting it." This is how I imagine Jim and Harper felt. They were pretty tired of stuffed, baked chicken. But they are adults, and if they didn't like it they could cook something else.

     I was unable to perfect any sort of breading in Keto. Almond flour just doesn't do it, and breadcrumbs and Penko breading contain my daily quantity of carbs. My almond flour breading is lumpy and sticks to the pan. The pan, you say? Yes, oven baked because that's what I had: an oven.

    Jim was gifted an air fryer at Christmas, much to my joy. I know people who swear by them and I was excited to give it a try. Of course, being off Keto meant using Penko breading for the chicken strips. The first round were a bit weird, dried out because I cooked them too long. The cookbook that came with the fryer said 14 minutes, so I did 14 minutes, but it dried out the chicken itself. So I adjusted to 11 and it was perfect, and it was cooked all the way through -stop thinking I poisoned everyone, including the dogs, I never under cook chicken.The air fryer is fantastic as long as you have something breaded, but again, I cannot manage the breading part.

    I decided to try fried cheese last night. Jim bought string cheese, and I carefully egg washed and dipped them in the Penko and almond flour---Penko has crunch but no flavor, I've become fond of the flavor of almond flour. Harper says it makes everything smell like cake. I did not look at the recipe because how hard can it be? I just looked at the time. I placed the dipped cheese sticks in the basket and started the fryer. Ten minutes later I opened the flyer to a basket of melted cheese mush with a breading blanket.

   The recipe clearly says to freeze the dipped cheese first.

   Too bad I didn't read the recipe.

   No problem, it's Saturday night and I have no other plans. I dip and freeze the cheese sticks for an hour. I then place them in the basket at the prescribed temperature and the prescribed time.

    And open the basket and....at least this time, the melted cheese mush had lumps in it.

    So this morning, I dipped and  breaded and placed the cheese sticks in the freezer to make later tonight. My hope is that several hours of freezing will help with the issue of melted cheese lumps. If not, please feel free to come over and I'll make you some lumpage!
    I dunno, every time I think I can do a cooking or baking thing it turns out that I can't do cooking or baking things. My children didn't starve, Jim cooks, and I can manage four things: meatloaf, any type of noddle and meat and cheese casserole, grilled cheese smammiches and pot roast. Nobody starved, but I also take no joy in cooking or baking things. It's frustrating because it never comes out the way it should, even if I follow the recipe exactly. It's like the recipe knows it's me and the ingredients conspire to screw me up, like band kids switching instruments on the sub.
     Jim believes we can make fried cheese work with egg roll wrappers.
     .....