Day 6 of the Honesty Blogging Challenge (food disaster?)

Day 06 — My worst cooking disaster involved _____________ and this person/these people…

To be totally honest- I think I have had so many.

These days, I sometimes enjoy cooking and sometimes I find it to be a chore. I do wish I could spend more time and energy into actually making beautiful well thought up healthy meals for my family, but time is not an easy giver. I think I may enjoy it more if that was the case.

Growing up I was a toast person, an egg person, a baked beans person. I was a heating up tinned soup person. Heinz Tomato Soup. My mom cooked a meal most nights, and although I may have watched, I never really got involved. (She was not a mom that pulled us in.) Our school lunch was basic and whatever we would whip ourselves. My mom was not a school lunch mom. But there was never anything really exciting in the house. Just your standard spreads. Peanut butter, jam and marmite are really boring when you have them every week for twelve school years. Mashed banana was okay, but always seems to go brown. I always had soggy sandwiches when I tried to be a little more interesting with tomato. (If only I could give myself advise on making sandwiches now, to the person I was then.)

You would have thought that my year in London would have changed that, wouldn’t you? I went overseas, and I suddenly missed home cooked food tremendously. We were ALL terrible chefs and realized that very quickly. We knew nothing. The best meals were the meals that we received at work. Most of my work in that year was in a pub, so at least I had a hearty meal most days. Our fridge consisted of alcohol, alcohol, and more alcohol. On some occasions we had bread. When we had bread we tried to also have humous and cucumber. Most of our sandwiches consisted of that. The milk in our fridge was those little tiny cartons that you get at Macdonalds or Burger King for your take away coffee. That was the brand of our tomato sauce too. Not all the time though. Sometimes we did have real milk. I remember that because we used to make a cold milky coffee many nights with a couple of tots of vodka.

Needless to say- I put on a lot of weight that year. Surprize, surprize!

Once I was back in South Africa and doing my degree, I became a little more adventurous. I was really forced into it. My boyfriend at the time (now ex-husband) and I stayed in a cottage in the garden of the house I had grown up in. I studied, and waitressed and he worked. A real job. Part of my parents conditions of living there was that once a week we would take over the cooking duties. It was a Wednesday night. I dreaded it. I cried on so many occasions. Luckily my ex-husband had worked in restaurants for most of his working career and therefore knowing a little bit about how to cook came with the territory. I was the preparer. I hated preparing, I wasn’t learning anything at all, and was never given any credit for a meal. How could I have been? I grated, and chopped and peeled. I didn’t cook! I begun to hate Wednesday nights with a passion.

Over time, we moved out and cooking became a shared chore in our house and I started to learn what needs to happen on a stove top in order to make great things happen.

I now believe I am a great cook- for the most part. If I had more time I think I could be better. I could become passionate about creating a plate of food for my family. I could be the next Master Chef!!!

The one thing that I have never gotten quite right though is baking. For whatever reason, I always mess it up. ALWAYS. (Okay, except for banana bread- that never seems to go wrong.)

The fact that I so easily mess it up, leads me to not be enthusiastic about trying again, and so the circle continues. Get excited about baking. Bake. Mess it up. Feel sorry for myself. Don’t bake again for some time.

Eventually I may never even try baking again.

The most recent disaster was a recipe off of a mini marshmallow packet. It was a chocolate-coke-marshmallow catastrophe. It probably would have tasted awesome, if I had remembered the damn baking powder! But I didn’t. (I seem to always forget it!!!!!)

My knight and my Princess ate A piece each, and commented that it could be a good sticky pudding. They ate it out of sympathy and pity. They didn’t enjoy it at all. I could see it in the body language and the time it took to chew and swallow. They didn’t rush up to get another piece either. They tried to put on a fake smile, and happy eyes……but those two are very bad at that.

I haven’t tried again. Yet.

Still thinking if I want to waste so much time and so many expensive ingredients on another gooey mess.

I can be great at other things. Right?

I don’t need to be good at baking. Baking just makes you fat anyway (wink, wink).