Eat to Live Moments

I like to eat.  I don’t Live to eat, like some do, but I don’t see it as merely a means to an end, like some others.  I have had one memorable meal in my life.  It was steak.  Or maybe pork.  Okay, I remember the restaurant.

Maybe I have an undeveloped palate.  I’m not sure what that means.  I think it means that I cannot distinguish between flavors easily, and can’t tell what I’m eating unless I know what’s in it.  I do not take too much time deciding what flavor is my favorite.  It’s like I fail to discern what’s good and what’s bad and what’s okay.  I will eat almost anything.

You might be surprised to hear that in general, despite all this wishy-washiness about what goes into my pie hole (oooooh… pie), I am a good cook.

However, sometimes I will make a grave mistake in preparation and we will have to order pizza.

Here are a few of my favorite food mistakes:

One food faux pas occurred soon after I was allowed to use the range in my parents’ home.  I boiled a box of elbow noodles and sautéed some onions in butter and mixed the whole thing together.  It sounds minor until I tell you that they were dried, minced onions.  Like a whole bottle of them.  And I guess stirred with melted margarine instead of sautéed in butter is a better description of what I did with them.  At least I drained the noodles before I mixed them with the awful onion-flavored oil-based butter substitute.  I tried giving some to my dad, who will eat anything disgusting.  He said no thanks.

Once I put a roast in a pot with some onion soup mix and a bit of water and stuck it in the oven.  An hour later I pulled it out and sliced it up for dinner.  It was burnt on the outside and raw on the inside.  I don’t remember what we finally ate for dinner that night, but I do know that I cried. 

Just yesterday I neglected to follow the instructions on the Mac and Cheese box and found that I had accidentally made Mac and Cheese soup for my children for dinner.  I drained the extra liquid, along with all the flavor.  They complained, as would anyone if they were expected to eat weird tasteless yellow pasta.

Although smoothies are simple, I can mess them up like a champ.  A particularly disgusting smoothie mistake I made recently was neglecting to add ice to the yogurt and blueberries I blended.  I also might have used milk instead of juice.  Then I had a flash of brilliance and threw a handful of granola in the blender.  What I got was warm chunky fruity goop.  It was not good.  I still drank it.

Forget about baking.  Instructions or not, I still can’t get it right.  Once in a while I will bake cookies that both look AND taste good, or a cake will look like someone other than a toddler made it in his Easy-Bake.  But not regularly. 

I was twelve when I made my first boxed cake.  It was a two layer cake, and it was completely flat.  I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong, and while I was re-reading the instructions, my grandmother came over and laughed at it.  She still laughs about it.  I do not.

A couple of years ago I made cake icing.  It separated and slid off as I tried to spread it around the cake.  I no longer attempt to make cake icing.

Chocolate chip cookies are the bane of my existence.  They always look like pancakes and I am embarrassed to serve them to anyone.  I won’t even put them in my kids’ lunchboxes.

Okay.  I guess I’m not such a good cook anyway.  Can I come over for dinner?

Dinner tonight. 
Can't wait to see how badly I can screw this up.

*******