I've cooked a lot of meals over the years. Thousands of them. After a few years of living on my own and nine years of marriage, amazingly, I've only had a few major screw-ups. You know, the kind of meal that once it's done, you take one look at it (or taste of it) and you've got the pizza guy on the line before the disposal has had time to grind up the culinary travesty you attempted to prepare.
My first big screw up was in college. I attempted to make fried rice on the little hot plate I (illegally) had in my dorm room. It turned into a big pile of gooey rice with undercooked vegetables mixed in. We didn't even taste it before it hit the trash can and we visited our favorite Chinese joint.
My second mess-up meal came just after we got married. I thought I'd be all domestic and make fried chicken. I guess I had the heat on a little too high, because when Ryan saw the chicken cooling on a paper towel, he asked me why I made brownies. Yikes.
My third big screw came a couple of weeks ago. We were supposed to have slow cooker roast with pinto beans for dinner one evening which means I was supposed to soak the beans overnight. I woke up at 3 am the morning of roast day with the realization that I'd forgotten to soak the beans, but I had the bright idea to soak them all morning, boil them for a an hour or so and then proceed with the recipe. Wrong. The meat was nice and tender after five hours in the pot, but the beans? Still crunchy. So, after a little celebratory dance from Sydney, we went out. Determined to not waste food, I put the beans back in the slow cooker the next afternoon and cooked them for five more hours, put the now refrigerated but tender roast back in for another hour and we were good to go.
Lesson learned: Always soak the beans.
Wanna help me feel better about my culinary failure? Tell me your worst mealtime screw-up!
William | Olympia Newborn Photographer
5 weeks ago
I've totally done that with beans before. If they're semi-edible, we'll eat them. Then I cook them longer like you did. Ha! It happens to the best cook. ;)
ReplyDeleteI've done the same thing with beans too. I tried to make hummus the other day and it tasted like ass. I was way mad about wasting all of the ingredients, and I still don't know where I went wrong... hmmm.
ReplyDeleteWell, my roasts always come out like crap! I cook them less or change the recipe or cut of meat every time but NEVER are they any good. Once I made an Enchilada soup recipe that sounded good but was so horrible! Not really my fault though, just a bad recipe for our tastebuds. Luckily it was a side dish to other food so we didn't starve.
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