Sunday, March 6, 2011

Sometimes The Meal Is So Bad You Just Have to Ditch It.

Have you ever made a meal that turned out so bad that you just wanted to feed it to the regurgitator in the sink? Or perhaps it turned out so bad that you even hesitated to do even that lest you invite a problematic visit from SPCP (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plumbing).

I did.

Except it wasn’t a meal that I created in my kitchen. It was one I created on my laptop.

To be more specific, it was a recent blog post.

I wrote it during one dreadfully long sleepless night (I have those quarterly for no apparent reason). When I dotted the last “i” and crossed the last “t” at 5 am it seemed pretty clever and funny. I should’ve known better. I’ve had long sleepless nights before and even doorknobs seem clever and funny at 5 am.

So I sent it along to my editor the next day. Even she had some reservations about it. Of course, I didn’t pick up on it since I’d been up for nearly 48 hours straight (a point when the dog’s water dish seemed to take on a hilarious character of its own).

She made a couple of half-hearted suggestions and after a few tweaks I published it.

That was a mistake.

If you cook, you know how it is. If a dish does not come out quite right you can often improve it with a little tweaking: a pinch of salt, a dash of this or that, a splash of lemon juice or wine, maybe some crushed garlic…

But some dishes come out so terribly bad we over-tweak it, then tweak it some more: a fistful of salt, a glob of hot sauce, ladles of gravy, more salt, more hot sauce, more gravy…until it barely resembles the initial dish and hasn’t improved one iota.

So yeah, like an entree gone terribly wrong I thought I could improve my post through some mega-tweaking.

I regretted it. After all my tweaking this post still sucked eggs. So I took it down and consigned it to the regurgitator of the ethernet.

But all is not lost, in my next blog post I will offer several cooking tweaks that actually work. I hope you’ll never have to put them into practice, but if you do, you’ll have them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the lamp in the corner has some new one-liners it wants to try out on me.

Bon Appetit!

15 comments:

  1. lemon juice! too much in the wrong dish and I'm done. I know how ya feel!

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  2. :) it happens. I once cooked a meal so spicy, tears were rolling down our cheeks. We had to open the doors and windows at sub-zero temps just to breathe!

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  3. I cooked a sweet potato dish one Thanksgiving that came out of the oven, and after one taste went straight into the trash - it was that bad and not even a miracle was going to save it. Life is too short to eat mistakes :)

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  4. I made pizza with potato cake crust and it was so heavy that one bite was just enough for all of us to push the plates away- far away!

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  5. @Crabby Beach. I agree - once you overdo the lemon juice it's hard to fix. And adding sugar just makes lemonade. lol

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  6. @Nancy and Vijay. Too funny! But it coulda been worse, you were lucky that it wasn't so spicy that when you opened the doors it didn't kill any of the neighbor's pets. :-)

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  7. @All That's Left Are The Crumbs. I love this, Felice: "Life is too short to eat mistakes." Mind if I borrow it every now and then?!

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  8. @Mateja. Potato cake crust? Oh my, just the thought of it makes me want to head down to the Y and swim a few laps!

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  9. I made a steamed cake once and it was so gooey (not in a good way) I had to throw the whole thing away.

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  10. Thanks for the msg on foodbuzz, just stoppin by to say I checked out the blog, i'll cruise through more thoroughly tomorrow! Nice job! :)

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  11. Oh my, I sure hope you get some rest! If your couch starts talking to you run.

    I guess it's like over-steering. First one way then waaaay to the other. I've actually had recipes and posts like that. Sometimes I actually end up sharing them on my blog which reminds me I haven't shared a disaster in awhile!

    I hope you are having a good week!

    Dionne

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  12. @Michele. Thanks for stopping by! I try to post weekly so be sure to check back often and chime in. :-)

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  13. @Tryanythingonce. The couch? Dionne, you shoulda said something sooner! LOL.

    Thanks for the well-wishes. It's been a busy week so far (cooking demos/booksignings in St. Pete this past weekend and Terra Ciera today. Whew! But I'm 'off' tomorrow before heading out again to teach a cooking class on Friday and four more demos/booksignings this weekend. Geez, I'm exhausted just thinking about it!) Take care!

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  14. It is amazing what a lack of sleep will do;) At least those who try to make it will have a fun story.

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  15. @Judy. Yes, it is amazing what a lack of sleep will do, lol. Just skim thru my deleted post! But the last part or your comment resonates: Those of us who try to make it will, indeed, have a fun story. Thanks for the reminder: that sometimes going out too far on the limb or staying up too late may produce results that we just might regret. But then again, those excursions of faith or chutzpah just might weave one heck of a tale...

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