Shout Out to Fractions!

Lessons learned today:

1. Never let your brain go on cruise-control even when using a tried-and-true recipe
2. Common sense and little red flags that go up in your brain are gifts from heaven. Pay attention to them.
3. Well, I think that's pretty much it.

Today I cooked for two different sets of folks. Why not double the recipe and just use half for one set and half for the other. Why that is an excellent idea, I think I'll do that. 

And why not use a well-liked recipe so that I know it will be a guaranteed good meal for all involved in eating it. Why that is another excellent idea. Let's do it!

So I begin preparing oven fajitas, a recipe I found on Pinterest. So far everyone has loved it. Awesome. Here I go. I start mixing up the spices that will be used to marinate the chicken. As I begin measuring out the various spices I say to myself,

"Hmmm, that seems like a lot of spices. I don't remember that...well, it must be because I have doubled the recipe. Yes, that's it."

A few spices later...

"Wow, that really seems like a lot. Well, I think I have more spices in the cabinet this time than I did last time. I must have skipped some of the ingredients last time. OK, I'll just keep on, I mean, I've made this many times and I know it's good."

I finally get to "Cayenne Pepper" which is one of the spices I did not have before. My brain is thinking about switching to cruise-control. My eyes register "8 tsp". Wow, that is a lot. I start measuring it out. Doubling the recipe, of course, will mean 16 tsp. Really? Wow. By tsp number 4 I think,

"Hmmm, that really is a lot." 

I dip my finger into the cayenne pepper and taste it, yep, it's pretty spicy. I think I'll stick with 3 tsp. I try to dig out what I can from the pile of spices I've dumped into the bowl to get the cayenne pepper down to a lesser amount.

Ok, marinate chicken. It's all in the pan and ready to bake. I double check the recipe for the amount of time to bake. That's strange. It's not on the recipe. I look it up on the internet site. That's when I notice the spice amounts are different on the internet recipe. When I go back to check the recipe I am using on Pinterest, I see that the TOP number of the FRACTION is way off in the left-hand margin, nowhere near the recipe itself. That leaves the bottom number over by the recipe. So instead of 1/2 Tablespoon of chili powder, for example, I read "2 Tablespoons". But I am doubling the recipe, so I dump in 4 Tablespoons. You can see then, that when I got down to the Cayenne Pepper (after dumping about half my spice cabinet into the bowl) I read 8 teaspoons instead of 1/8 teaspoon. That's a big difference Yo!

I look at the chicken. It is literally already baking under the heat of the cayenne attack. I think I hear it sizzling right there on the cabinet. My face burns. My hands burn. I glance at the guests in the living room. I think about the others who are innocently waiting for me to bring them a home cooked meal. This stuff is fire and I am pretty sure it's more spice than chicken at this point.

Hmmmm...

I rinse the chicken. I dump it all into a mixing bowl and rinse it. No joke it takes about 5 cycles before the water is no longer orangey-red and the spices are mostly gone.

Start over. Wow, it sure does look more reasonable now. 

1/2 teaspoon salt instead of 2 teaspoons (doubled to 4)

1/4 teaspoon onion powder instead of 4 teaspoons (doubled to 8)

You get the idea. Whew, I baked it and it turned out just fine.

Disaster averted.

Fractions are important y'all. Numerators are vital. You can't just use the denominator.

Lesson learned.