The "I'm sorry meal"

[Bizymomma]

Okay, tonight I fixed a simple meal. But said "I'm sorry" with everybite. How could someone who enjoys cooking sooo very much, screw up so badly, I ask myself?

Tonight was simple.....thick cut sirloin steak, portobellos, and baked sweet potatoes. I found a recipe, simple as it was, for just a seared and baked "ribeye" which I subbed a sirloin for. No big deal. The problem you ask?.....the salt. I don't know what happened but I got salt happy! I made a mixture of thyme, salt, fresh ground pepper, and EVOO, which I smeared on the mushrooms before searing. But for some reason, was unable to control the amount of salt that I used. It just p*sses me off and I had to bash myself... Careless. Steak: salty, mushrooms: salty D- I give myself.

[pjcooks]

Hey, bizy, don't beat yourself up! It's only a meal. We all do this sort of thing every now and then. I can understand your frustration, though, you think you have it made then some stupid thing messes it up.

I'm sure it was very tasty!!

PJ

[Bizymomma]

Yep...that taste was "salty" LOL..
kick, kick, kick, kick

[lxxf]

but never lived down a meal she prepared early in her marriage to my dad (they had been married 57! years when she died) in which she managed to prepare tough meatballs. My father (who couldn't cook a lick - oh yeah, he made potato pancakes which encased the entire kitchen - including the ceiling in grease) ribbed her until she finally quit cooking at about age 80).

I was helping her empty a bookcase in preparation of the painters, and she picked up a 1930's edition of the Joy of Cooking and shook her head and said "whoo, I've made a couple of disasters of of this one!"

If you've got a moment to read another story - as a young mother of a 3 and 4 year-old, I moved to Caracas, Venezuela. No problem, I majored in Spanish in college. I learned all kinds of wonderful things, I could quote poety, drama, Certantes, history, geography. All this wonderful education does not prepare anyone for running a household or getting the brakes on your car fixed. I was told there was no chicken to be purchased - so I go to the butcher (a several hour affair as you had to buy a quarter steer and supervise it's butchering. Anyway, I saw what I thought was a chicken (pollo) and I said I want that pollo, and he said, that's not a pollo that's a galllina (stewing hen). Same dif, I'll take it. Well, I took it home and fried it. My poor husband, sank his teeth into a leg, and yanked this way and that way and this way again, and when he finally managed to rip a hunk off, he started chewing.........and chewing.......and chewing.........When he finally swallowed, he looked at me in disbelief and asked what he had just eaten. Why, darling, that is a gallina (pronounced guyeena). I have eaten my first and last bite of gallina, he announced and left the table to make himself a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich!

It's been 26 years ago, but that is my measure of disaster. If noone leaves the table for PB&J sandwiches, I consider the meal a success!

[Half_Baked]

I had a disaster today myself!

Mr HB wanted an upside down cake and all I had were fresh peaches and apples. I found a cake on recipezaar and it used a cake mix for the top. The usual upside down cake - melt butter and br. sugar, add fruit but then you combined a mix, sour cream, pudding, eggs, oil etc.

I have had that mix for about 6 months to let Harold's grandkids cook when they visited but we always made something else.

I didn't remember how awful boxed cake mixes taste. I honestly don't remember the last time I had even a bite of one but the taste of chemicals were absolutely overwhelming and totally gross.

His son was coming over to watch the game and have pot roast for dinner and I made the mistake of using the recipe with the mix to save one nano-second of time. Fortunately I'd also made chocolate chip cookies so they had a dessert. I wouldn't even serve the cake after I tasted it. Bleech!

I learned. Plus all my beautiful peaches are all used up.

[bjcotton]

I liked that story!

Angela honey, if that's the worst you ever do be very, very grateful . I don't think there's a cook alive that hasn't screwed up one time or another...certainly never me.. yeah right! There was the time I fixed a cheese cake for no other person than our own Jean. What an embarrassment that was, then the time I crispy crittered the thanksgiving turkey, the time I fixed pork loin and dressing and could pour the butter off. I've embarrassed myself a time or two...but I'm still here kickin'!

[cjs]

Oh boy, we've all been there - I won't even go into the crappy 'dried shrimp dinner' that went into the garbage after one bite...

It is interesting how, after cooking for years, we all do get 'a feel' for how a dish will taste by reading the ingredients in a recipe - but every once in a while that knowledge will come back to bite us and we spew!!

Billy, if I remember right, the cheesecake was very tasty!!

Angela, well just think, you've paid your homeage to the Distastful Dinner Goddess for the year!!

[DFen911]

You know we could write a really funny book on all of our cooking disasters and I am positive we'd all get a good chuckle out of it. It would also remind us we're not alone in our little mistakes and just as Jean said, no matter how good we are, we still have those "Oh good heavens happened to this dinner" moments.

Someday I'll share the banana cream pie incident Hahahaa.

[cjs]

We'll share one day when we all get together with a glass of wine...or water And tell all those horror stories.