Carnage in the kitchen

Welcome to Kitty's Kitchen Nightmares...

Yesterday I had some friends round for lunch. It should have been a chilled out catch-up with mates - and it was, but only after a morning of chaos.

First the Pyrex dish in which I was preparing my Greek-style lamb roast exploded as I was putting it into the oven. Exploded! I didn't drop it or knock it or speak to it harshly; it literally just burst of its own accord. Cue a kitchen covered in tomato sauce and teeny shards of glass, and a chef in a very bad mood.

While Mr Kitty cleaned up the kitchen (bless his little cotton socks), I raced to the supermarket up the road to buy all the ingredients again so I could start from scratch. Among these ingredients were two tins of tomatoes, one of which proceeded to explode all over me two seconds later.

So now we have one shattered Pyrex dish and one irate chef who is also covered head to toe in diced tomatoes.

I finally got through the recipe, got the lamb into the oven and reserved half a cup of tomato sauce in a Pyrex jug for phase two. (Hmm, maybe Pyrex is the problem here...) As I started to clean up the kitchen, obviously I knocked the jug over and it went flying, covering everything in sauce once more.

Let's recap: one shattered Pyrex dish, one sauce-covered chef in a very bad mood without the filling she needs for the five ramekins of baked ricotta she still has to prepare.

What I wanted to do at this point was fling the sodding lamb out the window and tell my friends we'd be ordering pizza. But I didn't do that. Instead, I took a deep breath and carried on, eventually producing a very tasty lamb roast. My mates enjoyed it and, after a couple of rage-quelling glasses of vino, so did I. Before long, I was able to laugh about it (the wine may have helped in that regard).

My point, aside from wanting to share with you my tale of culinary woe, is that when the going gets tough it's soooo tempting to chuck in the towel, abandon your healthy eating efforts and gorge on grease instead.

Don't do it. Just drink wine instead.