Failure is not an option

Wrong.

I made this dinner for Hollie and I the other evening that sucked. It was some magazine recipe. I clipped the recipe out and it sat around and I kept looking at it and the accompanying photograph looked so good I wanted to eat the paper. But I didn't. I cooked the recipe instead. At some expense, I might add. And in hindsight I should have eaten the fucking paper.

But, it was something new and I tried it and it failed and I will try more new recipes because what I really like about cooking is trying new things to see if I can make them, or at least learn the technique. And I don't even get flustered anymore when they don't work because I know that my local is right down the street, less than a block away. And if it's really that awful, I can chuck my efforts in the dustbin, take a short walk down to the corner and be eating a hamburger inside of twenty minutes.

But we ate the bloody mess anyway. And I was thinking later that ten years ago I might have seen what I made as a success. So my standards have risen as, to some extent, have my abilities. And if you watch competitive cooking shows, which admittedly I do, you see that anyone, on any given day can screw the pooch.

So, you know...onward.