Get crabby and win a prize!
www.muttscomics.com
Crabby is probably my favorite character on the Mutts comic strip. I laugh out loud just about every time he is featured on the strip. What does that tell you about me? Well, let’s not go there.
I chose to mention Crabby today because I have a wonderful prize package from the folks at Old Bay seasoning that I want to give away to a lucky reader before summer is over. The prize pack includes an Old Bay beach towel, a can of Old Bay seasoning, a packet of Old Bay Seafood Steamers, an Old Bay bottle opener/key chain and a temporary tattoo, all stuffed inside a very nifty Old Bay beach bag. The bag has a shoulder strap, as well as a mesh bottom to keep sand from getting trapped inside.
To enter to win this package, I’d like to know what makes you the crabbiest in the kitchen? Is it poor kitchen tools? Not enough cabinet or counter space? Too many cooks poking around in your soup? Leave a comment with your crabby story no later than 5 p.m. Friday. I’ll pick the entry that I think Crabby would pick if he were a judge. The winner will be announced on Monday.
Lindsey Nair/The Roanoke Times
August 5, 2009 - 12:15 PM
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The thing that makes me the most crabby around the kitchen is that no one wants to help with the dishes after a meal is cooked. The dishes are left in the sink and allowed to pile up creating a problem later when it is time to clean them (greasy dishes have to be separated from the glass dishes).
When we remodeled our kitchen a few years back, I had cabinets mounted to the ceiling over the bar. A friend of ours built our cabinets for us and really did a beautiful job, but whenever I need anything out of those cabinets I have to get a stepladder or climb up on the counter to get anything out of the back of the top shelf!! I ended up putting stuff that I don’t use that often in those cabinets but it’s still a pain you-know-where if I want to use what’s in there.
What makes me crabby in the kitchen is when I open an 18 count egg container that only has one egg left in it.
When I open the freezer door and a box of ice cream mashes my toesies.
Or lastly, whenever I get the chicken, veggies, and everything else ready to grill…only to find out that I’m out of gas.
Hi. The thing that makes me the crabbiest in the kitchen is not enough space. I own every tool, gadget and enough tupperware to start my own company. But when I try to cook I make a huge mess because there is never enough room. It’s like cooking in a box.
What reeks terror in the heart of most foodies or as my granny would say, “good cooks” is when you hit a time of “rock and the hard place” while you are whipping up some delights in the kitchen. Recently, I had a first hand experience of this that made me CRABBY.
This past weekend I made my husband a homemade blackberry cobbler, with fresh blackberries right out of our yard and a homemade crust. You could smell it out in the yard as it baked. When the time came to pull it out of the oven, I lowered the door of the oven, using an oven mitt in both hands I reached into the oven and began to pull out the perfectly cooked cobbler. Then the oven door creaked and it began to close.
The rock and the hard place decision hit me in a second.. Do I let the cobbler drop and spend the next 6 hours cleaning out my oven and have no cobbler for my husband, or do I save the cobbler…
I, of course, saved the cobbler. I used my elbows to hold the oven until I could get the cobbler out of the oven.
Crabby, I was definitely, as I sat there with my left elbow deep into cold water with a 2nd degree burn, but the look on my husband’s face as he ate the cobbler was worth it.
Next time I will pull the tray below the cobbler out almost all the way first…
Crabby is when you have lots of tomatoes and other great fresh produce, you have a wonderful new recipie, you go to the store to get all of the ingredients and you don’t have enough workspace (courterspace)to put it all together. All of my pots, pans, crockpot, baking dishes, spices, etc. are stacked in cabinets because I only have room for a coffee maker and my blender and my cutting board on the counter! Bummer!
I can not stand when their are too many people in the kitchen. When you start cooking it seems to bring an onset of non kitchen helpers. They need to ask questions, look for something in the fridge, or worse look at what you’re fixing. If I had one day of peaceful cooking I would not be so crabby but then again I probly would find something to replace that crabby feeling…I really do love people…
I get crabby when I’m cooking and I cannot find the seasonings and spices I need because my husband has rearranged them. He’s a wonderful man and a fantastic cook (he makes an eggplant parm that is to die for), but he uses different seasonings than I do, and while rummaging through the cabinets for his favorite seasonings, he moves things to higher shelves as he looks. When I start cooking, my stuff is up on shelves I am too short to reach! That’s when my grandchildren begin to learn words their little ears shouldn’t hear. He’s such a sweet man…maybe he’ll read this and build me a spice rack for my birthday.
i get crabbiest when i have the product ineed but the wrong form of the product… for example flour but it is self rising not all purpose, or garlic salt and not garlic powder. and esp if i added it in before i realized it was the wrong version.
what make me crabby is i want to cook and i am hungery ,the dishes is dirty, and my kids scattered to far away places,after finishing the dishes i found out i havent got the right spices so to the store igo, and now iam tired andcrabby to eat in the kitchen.so we opt out a cold sandwich. the kids reappear to eat and very angry ,so everyone now is crabby.
crabby crabby crab
i invariably make about four trips to the grocery store because i a) didn’t have something and then b) forgot to get something and then c) ran out of something. it makes me crazy. and, i guess, crabby.
i am crabby,when the kids run off and leave me to do the dishes. iam hungry and there enough spices etc to finish my meal,iam feeling reallylow key crab,so to the grocery i go.there i found more crabs in the seafood asle that wasnt a crab, igo back to my kitchen,feeling like iwas queen crab,when my kids discover that a sandwichs was all they were getting. i knew with my crabby self,they crowm me queen crab for today.
I am very crabby right now!! I am almost 6 months pregnant and craving chicken livers & gizzards (prefer fried but will take anything!) We moved here a couple months ago. After spending over an hour and half searching the web I have found 1 calves liver and 1 chicken liver…not a single gizzard. :~(( I came here to see if Lindsey Nair might have some advice. She is dead on for every restaurant we have tried. I am begging for help and am grumpy, whiney, and CRABBY. I don’t need a prize, but the man that has to tolerate me sure does!
Having cleaned the entire kitchen before friends come over for lunch and going on to the Y for yoga class, I come home to find a burned on pan of scrambled eggs on the stove and dirty dishes all over the counters! Along of course with a sweet note from my daughter “Sorry about the mess momma, I had to get to work”. Teenagers! AAAAARRRRGHHHH!
I get crabby when I watch someone mess up something that I know how to do.
We don’t eat at home very often any more, but I get REALLY CRABBY when I am in the kitchen trying to fix a meal and often would like a little help (as in I need a utensil or something out of the fridge while I’m busy stirring or chopping), and there is NOBODY around! They are all in the other room watching TV or on the computer or just sitting around waiting for me to finish fixing their food!!! And, of course, Jason makes a very good point, too-they can’t be found for cleanup, either! AAAAARRRRRRGGGG! Just call me the crabby little red hen!
Tracy: Chicken gizzards… hmmmm. Are you talking about finding them out at a restaurant, finding a package of them that you could fix at home, or either? I know some home cookin’-type places like The Roanoker probably serve chicken liver dinners. If not on a daily basis, maybe as an occasional special. Let me ponder on this. Meanwhile, if any of you other readers out there have info that can help Tracy, please let us know.
Hahaha! I actually have a fridge magnet that reads “Don’t worry, be crabby!” that my husband bought for me on a beach trip, along with a little red plastic crab I keep on my kitchen window sill, and a couple of other crab postcards/pictures here & there. Definitely a crabby pattern in my kitchen. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU? My hubby & I do have a lot of fun together in the kitchen, but I tend to get a bit crabby when working in there because we have very little room & tend to get in each other’s way. He loves being in there ALL OF THE TIME, and is very helpful, but with hardly enough room to turn around, minimal, at best, counter space, and cabinets, WHAT ARE CABINETS? No, really, I have a couple, but ONLY a couple of cabinets. Desperately in need of a kitchen makeover as we are foodies, but one of us tends to get quite CRABBY!!! Would love to win this prize package to add to my crabby motif!!!
I get really crabby when I go in the kitchen to cook and my boyfriend, who can’t boil water, by the way, decides to come in and sit in the chair directly in front of the refridgerator door. Then as if my having to say excuse me a million times isn’t enough he decides to pinch off of the bacon strips, stir the “soup”, open the oven and generally just reek havoc in the kitchen- He has the nerve to take credit for the fabulous meal that has been prepared. Can you believe it? However, I think that the crabbiest experience that I’ve had is when I made the creamiest, most appealing, mouth watering, homemade macaroni and cheese you’ve ever seen (I was so proud. Can’t you tell?).I had just taken it out of the oven and it was still bubbling, so beautifully, with a golden brown crust and what does he do? He does the unthinkable… He grabs a spoon and digs right in! I was livid! Everyone knows that you “must” allow the macaroni and cheese to set up- Duh… There, I feel better now.
Angela, your boyfriend sounds like my husband last night. I was making a chicken pie for some friends who just had a baby and he was literally hovering over my shoulder the entire time, watching and snatching pieces of chicken out of my filling. I asked him what he was doing and he said “I’m watching you. This is entertaining.”
I then reminded him of the brand new television he just bought himself after whining for years that his TV was too small. He went to the living room to watch TV.
Tracy: K&W Cafeteria serves chicken livers w/onions and you can find chicken gizzards @ Food Lion or the Super Walmart in the meat department. There are gas stations that sell them but I wouldn’t recommend them because they are usually dried out from sitting under the heat lamps for Lord knows how long. Pick up a few packages @ the grocery store and enjoy.
I loathe that I am the only one in the entire house who loves seafood. I would love to have someone who adores cracking into a damn crableg as much as I do. Alas, I only eat crab when we’re out – not often.
Our stove is not flush with the base cabinets on either side – there’s a 1 – 2 inch gap on both sides. I get crabby when food that’s being spooned from the stove to a plate falls in this space, which I can barely fit a broom between! It seems that it’s always something really good that falls, too, or something really messy.
My well-intentioned husband seems to know nothing of timing in cooking a meal. He will cook things one at a time, or cook the part of the meal that takes the least amount of time first. Cold meals make me crabby!
Tracy: Wade’s supermarkets in Christiansburg, Radford, and Dublin usually have fried chicken livers and gizzards in their deli dept. Of course, if you live around Roanoke, Wade’s wouldn’t be very convenient.
Tracy–Super Walmart delis have great fried chicken livers. Most cook them to order, but it doesn’t take long and they’re cheap! I have to get my fix every couple of weeks!
I moved in to my boyfriend’s house two years ago to find out he didn’t have an exhaust fan over his stove. He had never thought about it and for us to put one in would cost a fortune. We solved that problem by us moving to FL next month. This prize would be great at our new place and to remind of us Roanoke who gave it to us : )
I just moved a few months ago and my whole kitchen makes me crabby! There are plenty of cabinets underneath the counter but none on the walls! I mean nothing! All my glasses take up my counter space. My pots, pans, bowls, ect. are underneath. My dishes are in a DRAWER! I’m using a bookshelf as a pantry. The former tenants had their dryer in the kitchen, so I have a dryer vent tube hanging out of the wall. And my cat thinks my kitchen island is his new scratching post! LOL! Grrrrrrrrrrrr
heres how it is every day at my house.although i live alone my small kitchen seems even smaller because i have two cats who are under my feet constantly whenever i am cooking. i cant count the number of times ive almost tripped over one or the other carrying a pot of boiling water from the stove to the sink or heading out of the kitchen with my hands full with plate,drink and silverware only to have the cats get under my feet as they race out to beat me and get the best begging spot by the table.now if that doesnt make you shout, curse or otherwise turn you into a “crabby at the tabby” cook then how about this…my apt. is in an older building and the wiring is very old. i cant use my microwave for more than a minute or turn on the coffe maker and the microwave at the same time without blowing the circut breaker.this use to make me so angry because it would knockout all my power and i had to go downstairs outside walk to the back of the building and the basement door where a combination lock greeted me. after fumbling with the combination for 5 minutes or so i finally got to the fuse box and threw the switches that would finally fix the problem…till i forgot the rules of the kitchen and would start the process all over again. one note- i finally got smart and bought a extention cord with a breaker switch on it. it didnt solve the whole problem but atleast i dont have to trek all the way to the basement anymore.
It makes me crabby for my husband and sons to be suspicious of new dishes. Once I put by each of their plates at the table a salad plate that had on it a canned peach half on a lettuce leaf, topped with a dab of mayo and a few cheddar cheese shreds. None of them would touch it, but kept sneaking sideways glances at it all through dinner. Finally, one said, “What IS that?” It was a PEACH, for crying out loud! You’d think I had given them a dish of monkey brains or something! I stared them down until they at least tasted it, then told them we were all out of ice cream, which was a lie.
BTW, Old Bay seasoning is awesome. It’s great sprinkled all over chicken before you roast it, in tomato sauce for anything, to season an omelet, in gravy…and it’s easier to cook frozen raw shrimp in boiling water and Old Bay than to thaw out cooked shrimp, plus it’s much better.
I get crabby when I spend 2 hours in the kitchen cooking an awesome meal and my 14 year old comes in and opens a can of raviola to eat.
Lori, at least he is cooking/starting dinner for you. Your Texas grandmother used to do the same thing, cook one thing at a time, sit down and smoke a cigarette, have a drink, then complain that it took so long to cook dinner! AGH!!!
I get really way-crabby when I am cooking and my BF comes in and turns the oven temperature down, turns the range burners down, critiques my methods etc. Not enough meat blah, blah, blah……He is a carnivore and likes huge amounts of meat, I’m talking two chuck roasts for vegetable beef soup etc., so one day I came home from the lake and made spaghetti with HOMEMADE meatballs as big as his head. He came home and said, “You don’t make spaghetti sauce like I do,” while looking at it like it was a pot full of turds or something. I came very close to pouring the pot over his bald head!!!!
I am from the Chesapeake Bay and no aroma entices me like Old Bay. I make THE BEST Maryland crabcakes EVER!!!!! Steamed Crabs w/ Old Bay and Cold Beer……Ya gotta love it!!!!