Paper Mache Soup.

I attempted to make mom's banana pudding. I started to get out the ingredients, but had to send Mitch to get flour and sweetened condensed milk. I didn't even get to the 3rd step before I had to call mom and ask a question because the recipe doesn't say at what temperature to heat the milk and flour..it just says remove from heat on the fourth step. I'm one of those people that needs to have EXACT directions. As I mentioned earlier, it said to combine the flour and MILK together--this recipe calls for milk AND sweetened condensed milk. But considering I left the little can of sweetened milk in the Walmart sack, I completely overlooked it. Still unaware of my blunder, I began layering everything and realized I wouldn't have enough pudding. So because I'm a genius I grabbed a box of Jell-O instant vanilla pudding and finish off my layering. I made the meringue, which I was most worried about screwing up, and put it in the oven. As I am cleaning up, I find the sweetened condensed milk---$&%*@)#!---ugh. So when the timer goes off, I am totally not excited anymore. The meringue was perfect, but when I spooned some out it was nasty soupy muck. There is a reason that the pudding has flour and whatnot in it, instant pudding wasn't a good substitute. And because I didn't put the sweetened milk in it, the pudding was like paper mache! So Mitch and I ate all the meringue off the top and tossed out the paper mache soup. It took forever to make, made a mess of the entire kitchen, and turned out awful. Mitch and I were completely disappointed.

Hah, I would like to note that the first picture is quite ironic. I didn't notice until I uploaded it, but my "Anyone Can Cook" cookbook is a screaming contradiction as I am preparing the paper mache pudding--on top of a Domino's box because I gave up on making dinner the night before.. :)