Easter Excitement

We had a nice Easter. The girls and I didn't do a ton of "prep" work, although we did get to dyeing eggs, which is always messier for me and more fun for them! But they looked pretty cool and worked out well for deviled eggs on Easter. My mom is in the middle of two classes (she's taking online type classes from Gonzaga for some degree in mental health) so she didn't have time to cook, which meant I was in charge of the family Easter dinner. Its not like our family is huge, so I was okay with it. I researched my recipe and settled on a Standing Rib Roast recipe that sounded divine, mashed potatoes & gravy for Erik, tossed mandarin salad and steamed asparagus. All fairly easy and quick which meant I wouldn't have to be cooking from morning til night.

Easter church was fine, Erik and I actually ended up filling in for some friends back in the PreK to 1st grade class, so our Easter service was full of snacks, singing and Veggie Tales. :-) We had a leisurely lunch of leftovers and then the kitchen was clean and ready for my cooking fun. I followed the roast recipe to a T with the rub, newly purchased meat thermometer, temperature, etc. It was smelling good, the potatoes were boiling, the salad was ready & waiting in the frig and it had been almost an hour and a half so I decided I would check the meat thermometer. I opened the oven door slightly, peeked in and was dumbfounded. From what I was seeing on the thermometer, my roast was 70 degrees Celsius. I was really confused that a thermometer purchased here would measure in Celsius. So despite the warning about only opening the oven if I absolutely had to, I peeked again. Sure enough, the pointy end of the arrow was pointing at Celsius and the flat part faced the Fahrenheit. I checked my recipe and decided that even if it was saying Celsius that it corresponded to the correct temp Fahrenheit, so I pulled it out and set it up on the cutting board covered with foil. A little voice in back of my head was doubtful that our roast was indeed done, but it was almost time for my family to come over and I decided that even if the roast wasn't done, we could at least slice it up and grill it as a last resort.

My brother arrived and started pouring wine when I started to cut into the meat. What met my knife was nothing more than raw beef. I was so frustrated! I called to Erik for backup, he sliced it and got it out onto the grill in no time and by the time the rest of the family arrived and had finished eating the deviled eggs, my whole dinner was ready. It was the beef roast gone wrong, the overcooked asparagus (overlooked during the meat debacle) and the runny gravy (because there wasn't enough decent good stuff in the bottom of the meat pan due to under cooking it). But the salad was good! And the pies that my Dad got at Safeway were good! :-) My family was pretty understanding and the roast/steaks actually turned out fine. The funniest thing is what happened when I tested the thermometer later while doing the dishes. I put it in boiling water per the test instructions and was amazed to see the arrow swirl around from the Celsius side and all through the Fahrenheit side to point directly at the test area. My thermometer doesn't point to Celsius, no! My roast hadn't even warmed up enough to move the arrow to anything registering on the thermometer!!!! I told Erik that there's nothing wrong with my new meat thermometer, just with the operator.