Oops

I have had quite a spate of cooking failures lately. And as my familiarity with the genre grows, I am beginning to notice a few rules - principles, if you will - that govern these unfortunate incidents.

1) Cooking failures usually involve at least one, if not several,  relatively expensive ingredients. Take, for instance, the evening in which I tried to roast fish, top it with a rustic tomato sauce, and serve it over quinoa. There was no recipe for this. I was freelancing, which was my first but certainly not last mistake. The fish (previously frozen) was more reminiscent of rubber than of anything else. The "rustic" tomato sauce was partially sweet, partially sour, and wholly unpleasant. The quinoa(s), poor things, were simply boring accessories to a tragic crime of a meal. It was meant to be a special and leisurely Friday night treat. It ended with a less-than-happy cook slamming dishes into the dish drainer.

2) Cooking failures often result in vast quantities of leftovers. Very unwanted leftovers. In an attempt to be as fascinating and casually glamorous as Nigella Lawson, I decided to make a batch of her holiday Chocolate Chip Chili. How could this possibly go wrong? But I should have known. I am not Nigella Lawson, I am not darkly gorgeous, and I do not have my own private butcher to to set aside the tenderest of beef shank for me. So I substituted ground beef and soldiered on. The beans I cooked myself (kidney beans) and probably (ahem) did not make sure that they boiled for a few important minutes. The beef stank as soon as it hit the pan. The chorizo was bland, the chocolate disappeared into the tomato sauce and the beans needed salt. But boy, did we have a lot of chili. And boy, did it upset our stomachs. Did I throw it out as I should have? No, of course not. There were expensive ingredients to be redeemed! So I froze it for awhile, just to enhance the flavors. Then I snuck it into next week's menu, hidden under a crust of cornbread (full of cheese and corn and organic flours...see Rule #1). I think by now you all get the idea of this story. And it finally ended up in the garbage. Where it belonged.

3) Cooking failures can often be prevented by listening to the little voice in your head that says, "Don't make the cookies with the quinoa, Axon...you don't need to! Just because it is in a cool cookbook, and you like weird recipes, and you have a sweet tooth! Don't do it! Don't waste the butter and the flour and the calories on a cookie that will taste like underdone tapioca with raisins! Stop! You are not listening to me!" I am now trying to pay closer attention to that voice in my head. And just in case you were wondering, the cookie recipe took three precious eggs, a tablespoon of equally precious vanilla, and made four dozen huge, unpleasant cookies. I rest my case.