Confession Wednesday: Kitchen Catastrophes

You'll have to click on that picture to see what's really going on.

Cooking has never come easily to me. I am related to several fantastic cooks, and I was trained by one of the best, but apparently when everyone else was lining up for that gene, I was back in the SPINE line, begging for a heftier helping. I can recall teenaged failures at things like popcorn (who messes up popcorn? People who open the popper mid-popping to check the progress, that's who!), and crockpot casseroles (who messes up crockpot recipes? People who fill crockpots with meat and vegetables and fail to add any liquids, that's who!). My siblings and I used to take turns cooking dinner, but you know, I don't remember cooking dinner that often. I think even my 10-year-old brother knew it was more palatable to take an extra turn than to let me loose in the kitchen.

Once when I was about 15, I was trying to make an apple pie while my mom was gone. The apples were coming along well enough, but I was mystified by the crumbly crust. Knowing I was in over my head, I called my grandma (who got a double dose of the cooking gene) and asked her what I should do. She gave me some advice, and five minutes later I called her back because it hadn't worked. She gave me another idea to try, which produced the same results. On the third phone call, her final words of wisdom were, "Good Grief. Crumble the crust over the apples. You've just made an apple crisp."

I'm a little better at making dinner than I used to be, but I'm still on the shady side of average. In fact, there's only one thing I make well: rolls. They're nothing special . . . no secret ingredient, no slaving over the stove. They don't even begin to compare to my Aunt Arlene's rolls, but it's the only recipe that rarely fails me. I've got a lot of people fooled, because rolls can be disguised as a wide variety of concoctions (bread, cinnamon rolls, breadsticks, cinnamon bread, sticky buns), but in the end it's all the same recipe.

If I had my way, I'd bring rolls to every potluck gathering until the end of time. I always have the ingredients on hand, and it doesn't require any creativity on my part. Salads, on the other hand, stress me out. You can't just bring lettuce, carrots and tomatoes anymore! Gone are the days of cool whip and colored marshmallows! Jello and fruit cocktail? History! A salad isn't a salad anymore unless it's full of nuts, craisins, strawberries, mangoes, cilantro (ack), ramen noodles, and that lettuce that looks like it was pollinated by a spider, and that you can't cut, stab or corral with a fork, so you have to resort to balancing it on the fork and cramming it rapidly into your mouth while hoping that all the tentacles will make it in before your advancing fork triggers your gag reflex.

Please understand, I find these salads utterly delectable (even the gangly spider lettuce), but the creation thereof perplexes me. I end up wandering through the produce section of the grocery store trying to decide which fruits and vegetables can peacefully coexist in a salad bowl. Green onions and mandarin oranges? Bell peppers and pears? Meanwhile my gaze keeps wandering longingly over to the aisles where jello, canned peaches and cool whip sit in all their simplicity. It's like trying to match up skirts, shirts, shoes and accessories when your fashion sense has been flat-lined since leg warmers came around the first time (or was is just one time? I haven't really been paying attention. ***See picture above.).

Please, oh please, just let me bring the rolls.

Lately, though, even the rolls have been failing me. Something just wasn't right. They looked funny, and they tasted like they needed salt, but I knew for sure I was adding just the right amount. I feared I was losing my precarious touch. What the heck was left to bring to potlucks?

A scientific investigation (I tasted the salt, then my daughter tasted the salt) revealed that my salt had lost its savor. Actually, I think it was mostly sugar and just a little salt. SOMEBODY had tampered with my baking cupboard . . . . a jealous fellow baker? A three-year-old who gleefully discovered open ingredients left on the counter? The recipient of my last anonymous (I thought) April Fool's joke? Whoever it was, they've doomed me to a paranoid life-time of tasting the salt (blech) before I add it.

But the rolls are good again. (Until someone goes after the cooking oil.)

UPDATE: IT WAS ACTUALLY MIRALAX. I WAS MAKING MIRALAX ROLLS.

What's the best dish you make? What's the worst thing you've ever made?