“Let’s make Pesto,” my brother said. Pesto… what exactly is Pesto? Basil, right? It’s one of those things I never think about, never order at restaurants, or have ever even thought about making. I know it’s green stuff that goes on pasta and it tastes good, so I said sure. We had a rare night without my kids at home so we could make whatever we wanted. I think the plan was my brother wanted to cook for me, but, since you know what a great chef I am, I just had to take over. I probably should’ve just left it alone and let the kid cook for me.
Well, it’s a partnership, so we decided to do it together. He pulled up a recipe on his phone and we went to the grocery store together. He was naming off the ingredients and I was getting them off the shelves and putting them in the cart. We got some pine nuts, (which took us forever to find because they are not by the nuts. How does that make sense? It has the word NUTS in the name!) garlic, lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, soy milk? I’m just getting whatever he is reading off the recipe. He mentions something about pesto, and I said that must be where the pasta sauces are because I’ve seen it there. There were a bunch of pesto pasta sauces in jars, and I told him that is not what we’re looking for because we are making our own. Then I see a little jar of clumpy looking pesto stuff and I tell him this must what we need to make the pesto. Then we also found some arugula because the recipe calls for arugula. Looking back, I should’ve noticed the recipe didn’t call for any basil and even I know that basil is the main ingredient in pesto. I thought that was the stuff in the jar maybe? But my brother was reading the recipe, and I was just following what he said. I swear I did not hear him say basil at all so I’m not sure this is entirely my fault. I am half deaf though, but we will ignore that fact.
So we go home, and we start following the recipe. We put some pine nuts and lemon juice and garlic and pesto stuff in the food processor. We follow the recipe and add some soy milk to make it creamy. Then we mix it all in with the pasta. Throw in some parmesan cheese. I think we added way too much soy milk because it looks like soup at this point. I thought it said two cups, but it must have been wrong. I’m sure the recipe was written wrong. Typo probably. You can barely see the pasta under the green pool of liquid. It is a very pretty light green color though so at least I have something pretty to look at.
It’s fine, it’s fine, I say. I will just pour out some of this liquid and then it will be perfect. I drain some into the sink and then continued mixing, but it still was just a watery goopy mess. The parmesan has also melted in a very gooey way. Is pesto supposed to be so watery? Oh, we forgot the arugula! Like adding arugula into the watery goopy mess will help anything but you never know. It’s worth a try.
So I add the arugula and it’s still a liquidly light green mess with arugula leaves floating in it. This looks great, I declare with a smile on my face. I think we did it right. I spoon it onto plates. I know full well that neither one of us will admit it’s awful. We will just eat it and say it tastes good. So it will be a success even if it isn’t. There isn’t a kid judge here who will wrinkle his nose and make a gagging face while spitting my hard work onto his plate.
As I am walking towards the table with the plates in my hand, I stop and glance at that little jar of pesto stuff. I pick it up and look closely at it. Pesto? Did we just use pesto to make pesto? I think we did. We just used delicious ready-made pesto to make soy milk pesto flavored soup? How could we have spent all that time making pesto out of pesto and had it come out looking nothing like pesto????
So we boil more noodles, and we use the actual pesto from the jar to put on our pasta. It is delicious. I consider it a success. A successful pesto meal. Even if we didn’t make it ourselves. Maybe we’ll try again next time. Or just buy ready-made pesto since it’s so delicious and easy.
We can’t throw out food though, so we save the soup pesto mess we made and put it in the fridge. We will probably eat it later. Maybe. Or just look at it. It is a beautiful color after all.
I know this is a blog about cooking failures, and don’t worry, there are plenty more cooking failures for you all but today can we just talk about birds and birdfeeders? It’s a bit of a success story if you read until the end.
My mom is one of those crazy bird ladies, in addition to being a crazy cat lady, she has probably at least 7 to 9 birdfeeders in her yard. She has them all hooked up to little pulley systems where she can lower them down to fill it, and then use a pulley to string it back up and hook it with little carabiner clips. It’s really a very complicated system and I don’t even know how she did it. Maybe she’s a secret scientist. Or an inventor. She’s been like this for I don’t know how many years. Every time I go over there, I just think of how much work it is and how much money she spends on birdseed. Never had my heart leapt for joy at the sight of a bird.
She’s the type of bird person who gets so excited when she sees a (insert your favorite bird here) that you would think she had won the lottery! She has a little app on her phone that recognizes bird calls and last time she visited, she came in from my deck and said, “Oh my goodness! I just heard 38 different kinds of birds in your backyard,” like it was the greatest thing to ever happen in history. (Eye roll) Don’t get me wrong, birds are cute and all but they don’t do it for me. They all sort of look the same. I know, I know, all the real birders are gasping in astonishment and disapproval. I can’t help it, I like what I like. And it’s not birds. I will stop and oooh and ahhh at every dog that passes but birds…. They have never made me stop in my tracks.
BUT THEN I turned 50.
Four days before my 50th birthday i was sitting on my couch reading and then I glanced out the window and saw a bird hanging out in my tree. Just an average bird but I immediately stopped what I was doing to stare at the bird. What an incredible creature, I thought. Look at those tiny feet! I had never seen anything cuter! And how soft do those feathers look? If I was a bird I would happily just snuggle with myself and not need this silly stuffed Snoopy I sleep with every night.
Then, with a desire that I can’t even remember the last time I felt, I NEEDED a bird feeder. Needed one. Like my life depended on it. I hopped on Amazon right away.
So I ordered a bird feeder. I could hardly wait for it to come. I checked Amazon every 5 minutes it seemed to see when it would be delivered. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve! I could hardly sleep from the excitement of it all. I was going to be a bird lady! A real bird lady! Should I add that to my resume?
Finally, my bird feeder came. I ripped open the box and admired my beautiful new birdfeeder. I pictured all the little birds with full bellies after hanging out at my birdfeeder. I pictured them telling all their friends and then I would have the best yard ever for birdfeeder parties. Well, other than my mother’s, but she lives 350 miles away. I rushed outside to hang up my new birdfeeder!
And then I realize that I have no birdseed. Of course, I know you need birdseed to fill your birdfeeder, but I was so wrapped up in the joy of being a bird lady that I forgot to buy birdseed! Where can I get birdseed? Do they have a birdseed store? After some research, I found out they have birdseed at my local Food Lion so I ran out to buy some. And that 10 pound bag lasted about five hours. How in the heck does that much birdseed disappear so quickly? Aren’t birds little? How can they eat 10 pounds of birdseed in five hours? So I ran out to buy some more. And now I just order it with every grocery order. And sometimes I order it on Amazon in between grocery shops.
But geez, those birds love my cooking! They swarm around my birdfeeder. There are these big black guys who hog all the food and there are tiny little birds standing off to the side, waiting patiently for their turn. So then I decided, well, of course I need another bird feeder for those little birds. I will just very politely tell the big birds and that pesky squirrel that this new birdfeeder is not for them. So I ordered another birdfeeder. And then I ordered another birdfeeder. I absolutely did not need another birdfeeder, but I couldn’t even control my fingers when I went to Amazon and started scrolling bird feeders. Do you know that they have solar ones and at night they light up all cute and pretty so that the birds can find their way to their food when it’s dark outside? Do you know they have stained glass birdfeeders? Who ever thought a birdfeeder could be pretty? It was Like this compulsion, I just couldn’t control my fingers. I did show some self-control, though, and stopped at three birdfeeders. For now.
Who knew I would have to take a third job to feed all the neighborhood birds? Kidding! Kind of. But it’s totally worth it because as I mentioned in the beginning, this is a blog about cooking and these neighborhood birds love my cooking. They just love my cooking! They eat it all and then they’re just waiting every morning for more of my cooking. Maybe I should’ve been a bird mom. Or maybe I should try feeding my kids birdseed.
About seven years ago, my brother graduated from high school. He lived in Florida and he needed a little change of scenery for the summer. He wanted to get away and get his thoughts together and try to figure out what he was doing with his life. That’s the big question all 18-year-olds have. So, we decided he would come stay with me for the summer. I had a friend who owned an electric company and was looking for workers, so I got him a summer job. The plan was he would come for the summer and then go back to Florida and most likely go to community college there.
Honestly, I do not remember what I fed my kids before my brother came to stay with me, but it must have been something, right? I mean they are still alive. It might’ve been those Purdue chicken nuggets. They are technically not frozen. They are sort of fresh and refrigerated so they seemed healthier to me. I was also pretty good at making Kraft mac & cheese, and really good at making those Bob Evans microwave mashed potatoes. I think I also excelled at toasting a piece of bread, then putting a slice of super processed American cheese on it and cutting it up in little squares. I think I did try to throw in a piece of fruit and some frozen peas sometimes. It must’ve been something like that.
But that summer, when my brother was here, I was going to pretend I could cook. Just for the summer. I could fake it for three months. I was excited because I always wanted to be one of those people who cook. Even a fake person who could cook. Maybe after three months of pretending I might really turn into one of those people who can cook. Spoiler alert, I didn’t. But I really did a great job of faking it. Kind of.
I must first share that my brother has never really had a home-cooked meal. He probably has once or twice when he went to friends’ houses but as far as his own house and growing up, he never had a home-cooked meal. They went out for every single meal. Going out to a restaurant was the norm for him and he was actually quite sick of it. I already had that going for me because first, he had no idea what a home-cooked meal was or what it was really supposed to taste like so that definitely worked to my advantage. I’m not saying my food would be better than a restaurant but maybe it comes with different expectations. This is not a restaurant! Lower your expectations!
Another advantage I had was that he liked everything. Everything. I made lemon chicken that summer that was so sour it made everyone’s face pucker when they tried it. But not my brother, he ate it and said it was good. Hey- maybe he doesn’t like everything… Maybe he was just being polite.
Every meal was so stressful because I had to act like it was simple for me. Faking who you are every day is exhausting. I had to act like I was easily whipping everything together like Martha Stewart when really I was sweating bullets, trying not to be intimidated by the meat, and just praying that the meal came out edible. I was up late Googling recipes and then reading them over and over and over memorizing them so it would look effortless when I made them. I was also hoping that during this experiment I would find something that my kids would like. That didn’t happen. But the summer went on and I became good at faking I was a person who can cook and I think my brother actually believed me. Or he’s good at faking it too.
Time flies as it often does and finally, it was mid-August. My brother was good company, and the kids loved him. I would miss my brother very much BUT I also was a little relieved to be able to go back to being the woman who cannot cook. After much discussion though, it was decided that my brother would not return back to Florida. He would stay here and work and go to the local community college.
I called my mom to share the news with her, and I was crying hysterically when I told her. She replied, “You love Lucas! You love having him there! Why in the world are you crying?”
I said, between sniffles and sobs, “Now I’m going to have to pretend to cook forever!”
But I didn’t. I came clean and told my brother I cannot cook. Maybe he knew? I like to think not because I faked it so well. He didn’t care about my cooking, and I saw that it was silly to try to be something I am not to impress someone. Yes, I know that is a lesson I should have learned 20 years ago.
Now, six years since that summer, my brother and I are a cooking failure team. We have our own little failure club. Of course, anyone is welcome to join but no one does. Does anyone really want to be a failure? He’s my little sous chef and we cook our failures together. We hold our breath in anticipation, watching my kids take the first bite. After three bites they declare they don’t like it, go back upstairs to play video games, and my brother and I high five and shrug. We’ll try again tomorrow we say. You can’t win them all. Or any in this case.
When my son was diagnosed with celiac, I was devastated!! I love bread! Oh wait- it’s not about me. I was devastated for him I mean. He loves bread. A life without bread? Is there anything worse? No little Hawaiian rolls at Thanksgiving?!? I think I actually cried thinking about that.
My brother and I eat gluten free when my son is around but every once in a while, when he’s not, we eat gluten and we feel like we are in heaven. Over and over again we just keep saying between bites and even during bites, “Gluten is SO good.”
It will be fine, I thought. There are so many different brands and kinds of gluten free bread that there has to be one kind, just ONE kind that tastes like bread. Nope. Not one.
I bought gluten-free bread after gluten-free bread after gluten-free bread trying to find one that tasted like bread. I should’ve thought ahead and made videos of my kid’s face after tasting each one. And then made one of those little fast forward videos kids make these days with all his faces. That would be hilarious! But I didn’t think of it and don’t know how to do it but I’m sure you can imagine his face after eating each one. If not, buy yourself some gluten free bread and look at yourself in the mirror as you eat it.
I went to every grocery store in Wilmington. Every grocery store! Even those fancy ones that I don’t usually go to, and bought every single brand of bread just hoping that my kid would eat one of them and not make one of those faces that looks like he’s going to throw up. No success.
It’s fine, I told him. Who needs bread when there are so many other delicious foods? Then I would drop him off at school and run right to Bagel King. I’d eat my egg and cheese on a gluten-full bagel in my car with sunglasses and a baseball cap so no one will recognize. I felt like I was doing something illegal. The sunglasses and baseball hat helped ease my guilt. The bagel was the best thing I had ever eaten.
I joined a couple of Facebook celiac groups which were not very helpful because I think they were for people who can actually cook. One helpful thing was everyone suggested making your own bread. They raved about their homemade bread. Apparently, you can buy a bread maker with a gluten-free setting?!? What?!!? That’s amazing. Sounds simple, right? You just put all your ingredients in, press the start button, press the gluten-free setting and bam! Delicious gluten-free bread. This was going to be PERFECT!
So I bought a bread maker with a gluten-free setting, and I bought all the ingredients for gluten-free bread. Some ingredients were weird and hard to find but I’m an expert at Wilmington’s grocery stores now so it was fine.
My brother and I were ready to make bread! We were positive! We are optimistic! We were going to make such great bread that it would be the only thing we would have for dinner. Just bread tonight because it’s so delicious. We would eat it with butter that would just melt on the warm bread. It would fill us up and we would just sit around the table and talk about how great I am at making gluten-free bread and comment on how it tastes just like regular bread. Actually, better than regular bread, but all due to my cooking. We would start having just gluten free bread for every meal. Makes my cooking adventures easier. Don’t worry, I would throw a vegetable on the side of the plate every now and then. (which my kid won’t eat)
So we set out to make this gluten-free bread with the most positive attitude there is. How could we fail? You put the ingredients in, and you press a button!
I carefully read the manual for the bread maker. A little friendly reminder said, “please be aware that using the gluten-free setting will not take the gluten out of bread. Really, bread maker? I was feeling really confident at that point.
We carefully measured everything. We followed the directions perfectly. We put in the wet ingredients, then put in the dry ingredients, then I made a little hole with my finger and put in the yeast. I switched it on the gluten free setting and pressed start. It all went so well.
Until…… I look down on the counter, turned to my brother, and said, “Uh Oh! I think this was supposed to go in the bottom of the bread pan before we added all the ingredients.” and I held up that little metal spinner thing that was most definitely supposed to go in the bottom of the bread pan to mix it.
Will it work without it? Maybe… Should I leave it? No, of course not! That is what mixes the bread. Somehow, we needed to get this little metal spinning thing into the bottom of the bread pan quickly!
It’s fine, it’s fine, I said to my brother. I told him that I would just reach in with both hands and separate the ingredients quickly while he reaches in with the little spinner thing and sticks it down there where it goes. It will be just fine.
So I stick both my hands in the middle of the bread maker and pull it to the sides and tell my brother to stick that little spinner thing in. But of course, it’s a little tricky to do when you can’t see so it takes him a few tries, but he finally gets it! We take our hands out and everything kind of goes back to normal. Kind of. We are both standing there with our hands covered in bread mix. and I say, I’m sure we’ll be just fine. I’m sure we didn’t mess anything up with that whole dry ingredients first, wet ingredients second, make a little hole for the yeast thing. How important can that be? Apparently, very important.
So that turned out to be a disaster. Of course, it was due to our little mishap and the next time would be much better.
Except, it wasn’t. It was supposed to be “cake batter consistency” but ours was more like water consistency for some reason.
Next try was hard as a rock.
Next try was wet and soggy inside although the outside looked great! That loaf really fooled us!
Next try had a hole in the side. How does that even happen?
Next try just tasted gross.
My optimism faded with each failed attempt.
Do you think the bread maker is defective? And it’s not my fault? Should I send it back for a new one?
It was time to face the truth and accept defeat. The bread maker was NOT going to change my life.
So, I put the bread maker away for a while, and bought gluten free bread hoping my kid’s tastes would change over time. They haven’t so I think it’s time to bring that bread maker out and try again. Things could be different this time. Miracles can happen. Wish me luck
There is one food that I make successfully now. I make tacos at least once a week. Sometimes even two times. It is the one meal that my family eats. Almost always. I have perfected it down to science, but it was not easy getting here. Tacos always scared me. Why are there so many different kinds? Why are there so many things you can put in them and why do they always break? Who invented a food that literally falls apart at the first bite? Couldn’t they have done better? And how did a broken food become so popular? I just stayed away from tacos because, first, I didn’t know how to make them, and second, they seem like a lot of work. I know people say tacos are easy to make, but it just seems like I was setting myself up for failure if I tried. There were plenty other failures to be had that required fewer ingredients.
One day, while on vacation, my family and I were passing through the Shenandoah Valley, so we stopped at my friend Lee’s house for dinner. She made tacos and I couldn’t believe it, but my kid ate nine tacos! Nine tacos! How can anyone eat nine tacos? Especially a skinny little seven-year-old? I’ve never seen my kid eat that much. I was literally in shock. I kept looking under the table to see if maybe he was hiding them in his shoes just to be polite and trying to boost her taco-making ego.
How in the world did she do that? Magic? She taught me how to make tacos and gave me taco seasoning that she orders online to take home with me. Easy enough. I went home all enthusiastic feeling like I would probably be able to open my own Mexican restaurant in the next week or so. I was already thinking of names. Loca Brita Tacos? Brita’s Brilliant Tacos? Best Brita Tacos? I will figure out the name later.
First attempt, I didn’t drain the meat. Who knew you must drain the meat? I didn’t read that anywhere. (except years later I noticed that it’s written on the back of the taco seasoning packet but, in my defense, at that time, I was using spices in a Ziploc bag that Lee gave me).
Second attempt, I burned the meat. Who knew you have to mix it so frequently? Give me a break, taco meat. Can’t you just sit there and tan a little bit without burning? Who knew taco meat was so clingy and demanding of attention? I shouldn’t judge, maybe the poor little taco meat had a rough upbringing.
Third attempt was a bit of a success. I did use the boil in the bag rice because making rice also scares me. How do you know when it’s done? How do you not burn the bottom? Why are there so many different consistencies of rice? Not to mention about 50 different kinds of rice. Jasmine? Basmati?? Long grain??? What is the difference? The rice aisle at the grocery store overwhelms me. Boil in the bag rice was the way to go.
My friend Lee came to visit me a few years later and taught me how to make rice. I had no idea it could be so easy. Now I’m an expert at making rice. It might be one of the things I do best. My sister was impressed. The last time she came to visit, I made tacos. You know how to make rice, she asked? Yes, I replied proudly, I know how to make rice, like it was the biggest accomplishment of my life.
Another tip Lee taught me was baking the taco shells. Who knew you had to bake taco shells? I just pulled them out of the box and plopped them on the plate. Then a few years later, I read the box of the taco shells and on the back of it says to bake it at 350 for about 5 minutes. Huh! I’m not sure how I missed that. Who reads the back of the box? People who can’t cook probably do. Or should.
My friend said that I should have a blog post about all the recipes that are successful and the recipes that I can actually make. I said, one thing? Tacos? That is the only recipe I consistently make that my family eats. That would be a very short blog post because all it would say was, I follow the directions on the back of the packet.
I ran out of Lee’s taco seasoning and just started buying store brand. It took me a few tries at tacos to realize that normal taco seasoning is too spicy for my kid, and I need to buy the mild. But look at me now! I know how to make rice, toast the taco shells, and follow the directions on the back of the taco seasoning packet. Everyone needs a success story. Everyone needs a win now and then. Mine is tacos.
32 years ago, I met my friend Lee. We were freshman in college and soon became good friends and housemates and vegetarians and vegans together also. She now owns a beautiful farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Every year in early April, she comes to the Poplar Grove Herb and Garden festival in Wilmington to sell her plants. Poplar Grove is an old beautiful plantation near me where they have festivals throughout there year. There are food trucks and art vendors and even live bluegrass music played by a cute little family band! They even have fairy hair! Who doesn’t love fairy hair? Except me because my hair is falling out and probably all the strands with the fairy hair would be out in an hour if I ever tried it. It’s still pretty magical to look at people with sparkly hair.
The location is charming and I love all their festivals, but I love this one most of all. It’s not just because my friend Lee is there selling her cute little plants. It’s because for two days every year, I am THE PLANT LADY. I could be that woman who owns a farm and grows her plants and travels to cute little festivals selling them. I could feed my family in addition to hundreds of others, with vegetables and fruits that I grow with my own hands! Little plants I water every day, talk to every day, and encourage their growth until they’re taller than me! That really could be me.
I could sell everything I own and buy a plot of land and start a super successful farm. I only think this way for two days of the year. These are my favorite days of the whole year. I put on my Radical Roots t shirt, (that’s the name of Lee’s farm) and for two days, I stand out there and help her sell her plants. I greet people with a big smile on my face and I ask if they have any questions. If they ask where the lemon balm is or if we have German Johnson tomatoes, I can answer that. It’s so satisfying, and I feel like such a success when I get a question like that right. I sure fooled them! They actually think I work here. They actually think I’m part of this farm business. I must look like a real plant lady.
But if they ask any other more complicated questions, I very politely say, “let me get my friend Lee.” I bring her over and I stand about a foot away restocking plants, but really, I’m eavesdropping. I can’t believe how much knowledge Lee has about plants and how to care for them and what they need. How does she know all that?
People say they come back every year, they look for her every year, and they talk about what a great labor of love this must be. All these conversations warm my heart, and I feel so proud. Of Lee, of course, but also of myself because remember, for two days, I am the plant lady. This is me; this is my life. I grow these amazing fruits and vegetables, and I feed my family from them. “I’m just going to pop in the backyard and grab some food for our dinner,” I would say to my family as I walk out the back door with kitchen shears and a little wicker basket on my arm. (probably with some gingham liner in the basket). I got the wicker basket thing from the people who come to the festival with their own wicker baskets to put plants in! Isn’t that cute? They carry it on their arm and gingerly place pretty plants in it. A lot of them even bring wagons because when you’re buying Lee’s plants, you are going to need a wagon to take them home in. Back to my imagination, though. My plants would be so plentiful. I would put plates in front of my family filled with peas, green beans, and peppers. We wouldn’t even need any meat or starch, just vegetables grown by mom. I will have to put vegetables on my neighborhood Facebook page, giving them away for free because I just have too much to feed my family. This is what an amazing plant lady I am in my imagination, for these two days of the year only.
I love the sunshine, the fresh air, and I love looking at all the beautiful plants. I love watching all the people come and buy plants. In my mind, I see each one of them going home and tenderly planting their plants and getting joy every moment watching them grow. Just like me.
At the end of every festival, Lee gives me plants. Every year, I’m so inspired by my two days as a plant lady that I have such high hopes that this time, I’m going to keep these plants alive. This time will be different. But it never is. I buy big pots and organic soil, just like Lee advised me to. I plant these beautiful plants in these big pots and every morning, I water them, I talk to them, I sing to them, I beg them, and nothing. (Well, that’s not true. Two years ago, I had a very successful basil plant from Lee, but I can’t feed my family just basil for every meal. Can I?!?)
I just don’t understand it! I do everything right! I even have the right attitude which is 50% of being successful at anything you try. Still, I don’t think plants like me. Except for those two days a year of course. All those little plants at the festival love me! I’ve completely fooled them also. When I get them home and they’re like, “What? You are THAT Brita! We’ve heard about you from the Plantbook! We are doomed!” Maybe that’s it! Maybe it’s because I have a bad reputation with plants. Maybe I’ll change my name and trick them all.
My sweet friend Lee is so encouraging and understanding every year. She gives me new plants and believes in me. You would think after 10 years of killing her beautiful plants she would not trust me with them anymore. You would think she would refuse to give them to me or even lie to me and say she is not coming to Poplar Grove this year just to save her plants’ lives! I think before she hands one over to me, she kisses it gently and whispers, “I am so sorry.”
But this year is going to be different. The plant festival was last weekend, and I pretty much fooled all of Wilmington (and all the plants) into thinking I’m a plant lady. I also came home with more plants than I ever have before! But this year I have my own house, and I can plant all the beautiful plants in the ground. The last couple of years I was renting so I planted them in pots. I’m sure that’s why I failed. (I know that there are plenty of people who successfully grow plants in pots. I heard them all at Poplar Grove saying things like, “I have this big pot on my balcony…. Blah blah blah.” Just for today though we will pretend that they’re all lying about successfully growing plants in pots. All lying! Every single one of them)
Yesterday, my brother and I planted the garden. (The dog helped) I named each little plant and welcomed it personally as I packed organic dirt around it. I explained how we were going to be best friends and not to believe everything they read on Plantbook.
The dog helping……
I walked out this morning full of hope. “Day one and all my plants are thriving,” I thought to myself. Then the dog walked out behind me and went pee on my lettuce.
I was complaining to a friend the other day about all of my cooking failures. She told me that I should have a little grace and not be so hard on myself because I actually had a pretty tough audience. It’s true. She’s right. My kids are such picky eaters. They always have been. If I had a kid like my brother, he would have eaten everything I cooked and I would not be writing this blog. I would be falsely led to believe that I’m an excellent cook. I guess it’s all relative.
In addition to being picky eaters in the first place, something happened last year to add to the perfect storm that exasperated my cooking failures. My youngest son was diagnosed with celiac disease. It’s not the end of the world, you might be thinking. Yeah right! Maybe for someone who eats meat and potatoes and vegetables but my kid’s favorite foods were Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets and Panera mac & cheese. Everything this kid liked had gluten in it. He was devastated. I was devastated. I spent a small fortune buying anything gluten-free from every store in Wilmington in the hopes that we would find something he liked. Nothing.
I stayed up late at night researching recipes and finally, I found it. I found a gluten-free copycat Chick-fil-A chicken nugget recipe this was perfect! I read it 10 times. It didn’t even look that hard. The recipe promised that it would taste just like Chick-fil-A nuggets. The woman who wrote it said her kids actually like these better than Chick-fil-A nuggets. This was going to be great! I couldn’t sleep that whole night because I was so excited about making this recipe and presenting it to my son and having him gobble up every single last nugget and proclaim, “Who needs Chick-fil-A when I’ve got a mom who cooks like you?” He’d have a big adoring smile on his face and I would walk out of the room literally patting my own back and high fiving my brother. I’m sure you can imagine where this is going.
I waited for my brother to come home from work because he’s my cooking partner. Except that one time with the grill when I almost burned the house down. That time I was going to cook by myself and have it ready to surprise him when he came home from work with a delicious grilled chicken dinner. Instead he came home to black chicken on the grill, smoke still in the air, me in tears and the siding melting off the house. Well, I learned my lesson. My brother now helps with every single cooking failure so I could have someone else to share the blame. Not really. It’s so I could have someone to dial 911 when I set the house on fire.
We both read the recipe through multiple times. We had all the ingredients on the counter, and we got to work with big, excited smiles on our faces. We probably even danced around a little as we mixed the little gluten-free bread crumbs with the gluten-free flour and prepared the little bowl for the eggs. We did all the dipping stuff and rolling stuff and shaking stuff. Then chicken nuggets looked perfect! Before they were cooked. Perfectly adorable raw Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets made by my brother and I. It was going smoothly so far.
Neither one of us had ever made anything before where you actually have to fry something. I am talking about dunk it all the way in oil as opposed to just fry it up in the frying pan in a little bit of oil. But that seems simple enough, right? IT WASN’T!
The oil has to be a certain temperature? There’s a certain device to measure the temperature of the oil? I can’t use my trusted plain old meat thermometer for that? “We can just wing it,” I said confidently to my brother. “Let’s just watch the oil until it looks hot enough.” My brother nods in agreement because I’m sure hot oil looks different than warm oil? So we watch the oil until it looks hot enough, and then we start dunking some chicken nuggets in. Just a few at a time like the recipe says. Oil is splattering all over us and we are jumping back covering our bodies with our hands but then putting on brave faces and moving back in to check on those nuggets. We set the timer for the exact time the recipe said to and we pull those nuggets out carefully with our cute little metal slotted spoon perfect for frying. BLACK! Not just a little burned but black.
“Hmmm… the oil is probably too hot. Let’s turn it down just a little bit and then just try again,” I said, undeterred. But this time the nuggets burned even faster, so I thought maybe the oil was too hot and we just needed to dump the oil and try again. My brother takes the big pot of oil out the back door and dumps it into some brush area we have behind our house. He comes back in, and we try again.
Can we use canola oil? Can we mix it with olive oil? Why not? Isn’t oil just oil? I didn’t really buy extra vegetable oil, but I had some old containers of oil I was just pulling out of the cabinet. My brother and I poured new oil in, watched it until it looked hot enough and once again dropped a few chicken nuggets in. The first batch looked a little funny. My brother said they tasted bad. The second batch was too burned, the third batch didn’t seem to be done quite enough, the oil looked really dirty, my brother ran outside to dump the oil so we could start again. I pulled out every bottle of oil and just sort of poured stuff in to experiment and see what would happen. Batch after batch came out worse than the time before. We adjusted the time, we adjusted the oil, but nothing worked.
In the end, five pots of oil had been dumped in the brush, (my brother got his exercise that day) multiple bottles of random oils, eight chicken breasts, my kitchen ended up smelling like a McDonald’s, my brother and I covered in grease splatter and burns, we were left with ONE, yes, ONE, edible homemade gluten-free chicken nugget. (edible is relative in this sentence)
I put it on a plate and present it to my son. “Here it is! Here is a gluten-free Chick-fil-A nugget. It will taste just like Chick-fil-A! You will be in heaven.”
“I hope you weren’t very hungry, though,” and I smile and shrug.
He tasted it and was polite, but he didn’t like it. And it absolutely did NOT taste like a Chick Fil A chicken nugget. (not that I tasted it because I am vegetarian) The recipe lied. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Don’t believe recipes. Definitely not prep times.
We ended up just ordering a gluten-free Domino’s Pizza for him, but I’m not giving up on that Chick-fil-A chicken nugget recipe. I think we’ll try it again another day. Once we recover. And once I do a little research on what exactly went wrong.
And I know, I know, I know, that you should not dump oil out in their environment like that. It can cause all sorts of damage to the environment, and trust me, I love the environment. I recycle and pick up trash and dream of having an electric car. I still feel bad about all the oil I dumped. Sometimes it even keeps me up in the middle of the night to this day.
I was panicking and I just had to get rid of that oil because of course, the oil was the problem, and the next batch was going to work out perfectly. Besides, I couldn’t use my normal black bean can for all that oil. I need a really large, sealable, non-breakable container big enough to store all that oil safely. I’m actually hopping on Amazon right now to find one for my next chicken nugget attempt. Let me know if you have this problem also and I will send you the link to the one I find.
The grill was going to change my life. It was completely and totally going to change my cooking game. Everyone says it is so easy to cook on the grill. I asked for one for Christmas and had dreams of making perfect burgers and hot dogs. I imagined myself standing by the grill drinking a beer all nonchalantly flipping my burgers. I even flipped them about three feet in the air in my imagination and caught them perfectly on the spatula. I’d flip my hair and smile shyly. “What? Awe, stop! That was nothing!” to all the nonexistent imaginary fans watching me grill. Hey- it’s MY imagination!
I was going to be one of those people who doesn’t even have to use a meat thermometer. They just know when the burgers are done. come on, how do they do that??? It’s like a Spidey sense but for meat. Do they get a little tingling feeling inside them when the meat reaches the exact temperature. I’m always running around with my meat thermometer in my apron pocket. Kidding- I have never worn an apron, but I am surprised that didn’t make it in my fantasy. I probably should have tried the apron. That might have made all the difference. Who knows? Too late now. Anyway, I always had my meat thermometer handy but this grill, THIS GRILL, was going to change our lives.
I would take my dog for a walk and smell someone grilling. That’s going to be us, I’d say to the dog. She seemed excited. Remember that she always loves my cooking.
My brother and I put it together immediately. We even took pictures with the grill. Big smiles anticipating all the cooking successes this grill would bring. I got grill utensils in a cute little zip up pouch! With a handle. I’d hold it like a briefcase and swing it as I walked out the back door. “Just going to do some grillin,” I’d say to no one in particular. Probably just to the dogs. I had a grill cover too. I was going to take such good care of that grill. I was going to tuck that cute little grill in every night with that cover and tell him what a good grill he was. In the mornings, I would pull the cover off and sing, “Good Morning Glory,” from Brighton Beach Memoirs to him. We were going to be best friends. My grill and I.
My brother and I right after putting the grill together. Can’t you just see the hope in our eyes?
The first attempt was burgers. I aimed too high though. My friend RT has been trying to teach me to cook for 20 years. He was excited about the grill too. He gave me a great recipe where you put cheese inside the burgers. It sounded perfect. Almost perfect except that I did not realize to had to mold the burgers closed after you add the cheese. Without this important piece of information, half the burger was falling on the ground or in the grill and cheese was just melted all over the grates.
Ok, that was too tricky. We decided to try regular burgers but they were too thick, burned on the outside, raw on the inside. No one ate them. It was a little discouraging, but I was still optimistic. I’d tackle burgers again later.
RT tried a fool proof one and gave me a recipe for kebabs on the grill. I made the kebabs like he instructed me to. I loaded the skewers and put them on the grill. I patted myself on the back and even took a cute little picture of me with my grill. Then RT texts and asks for a pic of my kebabs. Already on the grill I text back proudly. One quick tip, he writes back, if using wooden skewers, put the food tightly next to each other on the skewer to keep it from burning…
What?!?! I run as fast as lightning to the grill and yank it open and yep…. Parts of the skewers are burned completely, and some have even fallen into the bottom of the grill. Other parts are still burning on the top of the grill. We will blame that for the disaster that night but if I am being entirely honest, the meat was also burned. I guess I had not developed the Spidey meat thermometer sense yet.
That wasn’t the last straw though. That wasn’t the final grill disaster that made me give up grilling and put all my hope in the air fryer. The real grill disaster was a doozy.
There was a grilled chicken recipe that was so easy and so good my friend said. My family would be so impressed. This one was going to be different. I made the little marinade with olive oil and spices and stuck my chicken in the fridge for a couple hours. I would keep checking on it and asking, “Are you ready to become a delicious meal?” I was trying to bond with the chicken.
I had the recipe written down, I was feeling confident, I was telling the chicken that he does not intimidate me. I was ready to cook the chicken. I walked outside swinging my cute little grill utensil bag, heated up the grill and I was ready. I might have even drunk a beer, feeling all smug and confident.
When the grill was hot, I opened the bag, pulled a piece of chicken out with tongs and plopped it on the grill. There was a little sizzle and a little fire but that’s what grills do I thought, so I just kept going with the rest of the chicken.
It didn’t take long until there was a lot of fire! A lot! Huge fire! Fire coming out of the bottom of the grill also! How does fire come out of the bottom of a grill? I was carefully trying to pull the grill out away from the house while it was on fire because I saw the siding slowly melting. I’d pull it towards me inch by inch while turning my face away from the flames and telling myself it was going to be ok. I was not really believing myself.
Later, when I retell this story, I have a friend who says.” everybody always says to pull the grill 8 feet from the house!”
“ Everybody? Who is everybody?” I reply. “I know everybody and I have never heard that!”
“Humph,’” was my reply. That is what my dog says to me when I say something he doesn’t want to hear. It’s a pretty good line so I’ve started using it. OK, back to the grill being on fire.
Of course this happened to be the night when my kid had five friends over. They all pop their heads out the back door while I’m pulling this grill away from the house and flames are shooting up and down. They ask if everything is OK. I put on my best smile and say, “yes yes, it’s supposed to be like this.”
So they go back inside while I keep opening the grill and begging the fire to go down. They popped their heads out again and my son says he thinks that he should probably get the fire extinguisher. I said no no, this is fine. It’s supposed to be like this.
A minute later he says he’s going to get the fire extinguisher, and I say OK, if it will make you feel better. It’s under the kitchen sink I tell him. Guess what? I have no idea why and I have no idea how this happened, but there is NO fire extinguisher under the sink. There is no fire extinguisher anywhere in the house! I know, how could I be such a terrible cook and not make sure the first thing I have is a fire extinguisher? I really thought there was one under the sink, but I have a feeling that was the house I lived in before.
My son’s friend Max sticks his head out of the door and asks if I want him to call his dad, who lives across the neighborhood, to bring a fire extinguisher. Once again, I say no no, everything’s fine. It’s supposed to be like that.
But a minute later, he sticks his head out, sees the flames (that are not listening to me when I beg them to quiet down) and says he’s going to call his parents and I do not object.
But then, I notice that the fire is going out a little bit. It’s getting better! It’s getting better! The fire listened!! It does not appear that I’m going to burn my house down and my kids, and all their friends also. What a relief!
I call Max‘s mom, Kellie Borelli and I ask where they are and she says they are on their way over with the fire extinguisher and am I ok? I tell Kellie about it and she says that has happened to her before. She said she actually called the fire department to come out and put out the fire in her grill! When they got there, they told her all she had to do was keep her grill closed. Sorry to throw you under the bus with your cooking failures, Kellie, but I need someone to make me look good at a moment like this. Misery loves company. We all had a good laugh and they ended up turning around because I really didn’t need the fire extinguisher after all. This time.
Later, I was recapping the story to RT (ready to blame him for me almost setting my house on fire) and he said, “you did shake the oil off the chicken really well before you put it on the grill, right?” I said “no! Why would I do that??? You didn’t tell me to do that??? How am I supposed to know that?” And he says “well, oil, and fire….”
He says he will be sure to give me more specific instructions from then on. I still blame him.
This is an actual picture of the actual chicken I was cooking on that day. After the fire died down, I thought I needed a picture to remember it by. Not for use in my blog because who would’ve ever thought I would started a blog about all my kitchen failures.
That really might’ve been the last time I used the grill. Poor little guy doesn’t even have his cover on anymore. It blew off and I didn’t even feel like putting it back on. The dogs have peed on it and my brother and I used it to drag yard waste across the yard. I’d like to say I’m not giving up on the grill and I’d like to say I’ll be back to the grill, but I probably won’t.
It’s still on my deck, though, rusted and sad with that first bottle of propane. I was thinking I’d go through a bottle a month with all the grilling I’d be doing. I was budgeting for that! A friend asked me the other day if my grill still even works? I don’t know, but that’s OK! The grill didn’t work out. I think I will buy an air fryer.
Yes! I can just picture now how successful I will be with an air fryer. I should’ve bought myself an apron for the air fryer. Couldn’t hurt. That’s another post.
I moved out of that rental house about a month ago. I was nervous that I was going to get charged for the melted siding and I couldn’t even imagine how much that was going to cost. It turns out they didn’t charge me for it. I don’t even know if they saw it! I sure hope my property manager never reads this. My brother says it’s fine and just looks like weather damage but to me it completely looks like melted siding. Yes, I got lucky on one thing, I guess.
The road to my cooking failures. Where did it begin? Did my mom teach me how to cook? Not really. Do I remember my mom cooking? I remember cous cous. Some stew we ate in Mauritania with our hands that became a staple growing up. It was delicious. Some sort of tomato-based sauce with potatoes and other vegetables. The cous cous would soak into the sauce. It was delicious. I remember pork chops and apple sauce. I remember spaghetti but mostly because my little sister had a spaghetti shirt she had to wear every time we ate spaghetti. She was a bit of a slob.
Well, it’s not fair to blame my mother. Plenty of people grow up without their mom “teaching them how to cook” and still become successful at cooking. No, I am special. Not a regular failure. Not a sometimes failure. I am an unbelievable cooking failure. And this is my story.
I always dreamed of being the perfect housewife and mother. Ever since I was eight years old playing with my bald cabbage patch kid, Benedict Arnold. Yes, that was really the name he came with. Sure, I wanted a job like being a teacher probably but mostly I just wanted to be a mom and a housewife. To clean the house while skipping around singing Christmas carols making wonderful organic meals for my children. They would clean their plates with smiles on their cute little faces. My husband would come home to a delicious home cooked meal. My mom used to tell me that when her dad ate her mom’s cooking, he would mmmm mmmm mmmm with pleasure because the food was so good. That is what I pictured my husband doing while eating my home cooked meals. Never happened. Not once. Not even close.
Of course, my kids would love veggies and almonds and probably even tofu. Fast forward to 2008 where I would peel off the outside of McDonald’s chicken nuggets and chase my one year old kid around the house shoving bites of the insides into his mouth every few minutes. Yes yes, I know about choking and how your kid should only eat sitting in a chair. I really tried. I swear I did.
Did my husband ever come home to a delicious home cooked meal? Well, there was one crock pot recipe I got from Real Simple that my husband liked.
But most nights…. My son liked to “cook dinner for daddy” so when daddy got home from work, he’d have dinner. Before he went to bed, Dylan would make his daddy dinner. In a big bowl he would mix anything. Cereal, mayonnaise, salad dressing, ketchup, fruit snacks, milk. He thought he was a great three-year-old chef. He would leave it out for daddy. And that is what my husband came home to. He would look at it, dump it, and every morning tell Dylan it was delicious. No wonder we are divorced. Ok, there might be a few reasons other than my cooking but that is up there.
Meat scared me. I’ve been vegetarian since 1993. I remember putting meat in the pan and trying to psych the meat out. I would literally talk to the meat in the pan out loud and say, “I’m not scared of you!! You will not intimidate me, beef!!” But the meat always intimidated me. It felt good though to try to be brave in front of meat. Fake meat bravery. The meat never believed it.
My mom always said that anyone could cook if they could read a recipe. Well, this ONE time (and only this one time) my mom was wrong. Very very wrong. Because I could read a recipe no problem. I’m actually great at reading. I read all the time. English was my favorite subject. But still, reading did not help in the cooking department.
I will say my brother Lucas loves my cooking and my dogs too. So it can’t be that bad, you are thinking. Yes yes it can. They are not good judges. Do not trust brothers or dogs. Trust kids. Who never like a single thing I cook. Not a single thing.
I get recipes from great cooks. I have friends who could probably win cooking contests. They give me recipes and try to teach me to cook. A for effort. I joke that when they are on their deathbed their one dying regret will be that they could not teach Brita to cook. We joke but it’s a very likely possibility. Poor friends.
Also, I was going to have that perfect textbook baby who not only ate anything I put in front of him, but also did all those things babies were supposed to do. Like nap, go to bed, not climb up walls, play with their cute little baby toys in an age appropriate manner, sit on the kitchen floor looking all sweet and playing happily with their toys while I cooked and slaved in the kitchen. You know, the kind of kid that you could leave in the next room for a minute to get other things done. The kind that would sit happily in the front of the grocery cart chewing a cracker with an adorable smile on his face while you leisurely strolled around the grocery store picking organic items and carefully planning elaborate meals. I didn’t get that baby. I had the one that I could not take my eyes off for a second. A SECOND. I know what you are thinking but honestly, it didn’t matter how baby proofed my house was. My house was practically a preschool classroom. Didn’t matter.
So that didn’t leave a lot of time for my cooking dream but once again, it’s not fair to blame my kid. Plenty of parents have difficult… umm. I mean different children and they still manage to cook delicious and mouth-watering meals for their hard working husbands.
You know how in the movies, the husband comes home late from work and the wife is waiting, looking radiant, probably wearing a dress and heels, pearls too, (I don’t think I own heels. Or pearls) the baby is sleeping soundly in his crib (looking angelic while snuggling his lovey) the house is spotless, and a warm dinner is waiting on the table. There are probably candles lit and jazz music or some shit like that. I wanted that. I pictured that. I would be perfect at that.
But it was nothing like that. First, my kid didn’t go to bed. I’m not sure he slept the first five years of his life at all. Not just he stays up a little late (hee hee- cute innocent laughs by perfect housewives who say this because their kid stayed up until 8:15) EYE ROLL!! He NEVER slept. You think I’m exaggerating. I’m not.
But still, I had to feed my kid, right? Oh, I pictured him liking everything I gave him. I imagined cutting up avocados and cauliflower and putting it on his little highchair tray while he gobbled in up happily. Not too quickly though because I had taught him about chewing carefully and not choking. And never throwing food on the floor because that is a waste. And we didn’t have a dog then.
I imagined myself making my own baby food of course. Doesn’t everyone? It’s the sign of a good mother. In my imagination I would be slaving for hours in the kitchen while my baby sat on the kitchen floor happily playing with his toys. We would sing songs and nursery rhymes. I would talk through how I was making the baby food and how delicious it would be. I know the importance of talking to your baby. Just talk and talk about anything. Just so he could hear your voice and develop amazing language skills. I’d label all the jars of baby food with a freaking label maker.
Well first of all, my baby didn’t like anything. Except cheese (I’m proud of this because cheese is my favorite food. He must have inherited that from me), goldfish, saltines, maybe something else. But nothing he was supposed to eat.
I’d try cereal or a banana for breakfast. They would end up on the floor. No dog as I mentioned before. I’d try to feed him in the highchair, but this kid could only be contained for 7.8 seconds if I was lucky. Just enough time to throw it all on the floor and scream to be free.
I soon realized in addition to being contained, the other problem was this kid could not sit still. I bought one of those cute little tables where you see kids sitting all happily and eating their food. Usually gazing out a window or something. Well, my kid would not sit for longer than 30 seconds. I even tried TV for distraction. I know, I know, TV is bad for babies that young. It didn’t work.
So instead of feeding him chicken cordon bleu off a tiny Donald duck fork while he happily sat in his booster chair up at the table while we talked about our fun adventures of the day, his dinner consisted of turkey lunch meat, cut up cheese sticks, frozen peas (yes, I didn’t even bother to cook them) and apples. All cut up in those cute little plates with all the different departments. And I fed it to him while shoving pieces in his mouth with my fingers as he was running by or standing on his train table. My dinner consisted of whatever was leftover on his cute little plate. Except not the meat since I have been vegetarian for over 30 years. So, when my husband got home after his long day at work, I was still chasing the kid around, (hours after his bedtime) and hubby had to fend for himself for dinner. As you see, I had the best intentions. It was all going to work out perfectly. Like a dream come true.
Cooking Failures 