Summer Blog Challenge Day 9 - June 9-- Your worst cooking disaster.

Let me preface this by letting you know that I am an excellent cook and baker. I take a lot of pride in my cooking and delight in providing friends and family with tasty dishes. I have a knack for knowing just what flavors to combine and how to combine them. I rarely use recipes unless I'm cooking something new and even then I'm often tweaking things. My husband loves my creations and jokes about a couple of my cooking disasters that I've had with boxed food.

I don't remember all of the details, but I know for sure it involved a boxed product that is supposed to be idiot proof. You know, follow the directions and you have yummy food. Well, no one ever said idiot proof isn't smarty pants, dyslexic proof. (My husband also likes to kid with me about the fact that I can do calculus, but can barely add, subtract, multiply, and divide without a calculator!) I believe it was a box of Zataran's (sp? Oh yes, I struggle with that too!) or some other rice dish. I set about prepping and setting up to make this dish. I read the directions, measure out my water (I'm anal about this kind of stuff. Did I tell you I spent half my college career as a chemistry major before switching back to computer science?), put everything in the pot, and start cooking it. About half way through I start to realize something is wrong. There's just too much water. I'm not talking just a little extra, but a massive amount extra! I pick the box up and reread the directions. I'm stunned to discover the amount of water is drastically less than what I added. I can't remember now, but I'm pretty sure it was either I doubled the water or I misread the unit of measurement! It wasn't the first time I've done this, I used to take tests in school and swear that the test said one thing only to discover it was a completely different word after I got the test back. I know we laughed then and still laugh about it! I'm not sure any longer whether we ate it or scrapped it.

I'm pretty sure I have a few other disasters. I know the first time I made bread I didn't check the temperature of the water and ended up with something more like a pretzel than challah bread. On that note, I'm going to leave you with a picture of the SECOND loaf of challah bread I made.

It was as good as it looks!