baking disasters and delights

So I'm basically in love with baking. I have been feeling more and more confident with my ability to cook as I've been cooking for a dinner group for the last year and I'm in a foods class this semester. I also had learned to trust pinterest... I still kind of do, just not completely. Saturday night Bec and I decided we should go to the store and get stuff to make a good Sunday dinner for us and Sam because it had been a long time since we had all been home for Sunday Dinner. We decided to try a new recipe from pinterest. It had good ingredients so we thought that it must be good. It was called "melt-in-your-mouth chicken." I made it just how the recipe told me to and then I put it in the oven. We were all really excited because it smelled good and looked just like the picture on pinterest. Here it is in case you haven't seen it:

It looks delightful right?

Wrong! What it actually tasted like was this...

Yep, salt! It was SOOO gross. Bec even got the chills when she took her first bite! Such a disappointment! Luckily, we had some awesome potatoes and an incredible salad so that we didn't die, but still it was kind of depressing for me. 

Then we had decided to make churros for dessert and I messed them up by leaving the dough out too long, but I thought Bec had saved them until when we took them out of the oven they were all burnt on the bottom. Although I have to admit that they weren't that bad and everyone at dessert night loved them, it was just depressing to have two failures in one day!

So today I had my foods class and we were all making our own apple pies to take home. I was feeling like I was a horrible cook, but I decided to try my best anyways. Everything went really smoothly and I decided to try a lattice crust. Here's how it turned out...

pre-baking

post-baking.

I can't lie. I was very pleased with how it turned out. The lattice crust even turned out looking decent. And most importantly, it tasted SO GOOD! We had it with some boys from our dinner group and they brought ice cream and I'm a sucker for hot pie with ice cream. It's probably a good thing this pie turned out or I would have sworn that I would never bake again. Turns out that now I'm hooked again... big shocker there.

the media today = filth

I've been thinking a lot lately about how good Satan is at reeling people into his traps. He knows just how to do it so that you don't feel like you're doing anything wrong at all and then all the sudden you find that you're rationalizing everything. I think Satan's main way to reel us in at the moment is through the media. It seems as though there is so much filth on TV, in movies and in songs that sometimes I think that I should never watch/listen to anything again, but that is not the case. The media can be a positive force too. There have been several movies and songs that have literally helped my testimony to grow and I'm not talking about church related media either. There is some good out there. You just have to sort through a lot of bad to get through it.
It breaks my heart to see how many FABULOUS people watch garbage! They have been lulled into Satan's trap. Don't worry, I completely understand that I have been there done that. This past fall semester I had a professor who pointed out something that I have not been able to stop thinking about. He told us that one of the main reasons that really good people break the law of chastity is because they watch bad things. I know, I know you've heard it before and it doesn't feel true, but let me finish. He then pointed out that when you watch bad media a lot you begin to stop recognizing when the spirit leaves you. This presents many problems, one of the biggest being when you go to far the spirit will leave, but if you don't recognize that you can get into trouble that you wouldn't have otherwise. When he told me this I decided that it was a big deal and that I need to do something to make sure that I wasn't desensitized. My professor challenged us to go without media for 30 days and then go back and see what things bother you. I decided to do it and the effects were amazing. I realized so many things that I had been watching or listening to that I shouldn't be. Now that I have cut those things out of my life I have felt a HUGE difference. I have been happier and I can literally feel the spirit with me more often.
I wish that everyone would try this so that they could see how much happier and safe that they can be. It has blessed my life more than I could have ever imagined. I think this is something so crucial because the media is getting so horrible. Remember when "Brokeback Mountain" came out and everyone flipped? Yeah well now in shows that EVERYONE, including really, really good people watch there are gay and lesbian couples are MAIN CHARACTERS! That is so sad to me. This is something that needs to be stopped. We can't keep thinking that this is ok. We have to become re-sensitized.