epic cheesy fail...
hmph. i was so confident in my kitchen abilities. now i'm worried because i usually take these things a little too far and become obsessive about mastering it. it becomes a challenge, you see. i did it with chocolate chip cookies. i used to make the crappiest chocolate chip cookies imaginable. oh, they were horrible. no idea why -- i'd always follow the instructions. then i became frustrated with it and made dozens of batches of the little buggers until i got it right. that was somewhere around early high school or so. now i make some of the best chocolate chip cookies that i've ever had, using the exact same nestle tollhouse recipe. it's silly, but i'm proud of them. we won't talk about chocolate fudge. i can make a mean fudge, but the perfect fudge remains my greatest culinary rival. i suppose that's what makes me a decent cook, though -- that perseverance. but yes, my cheese failed. or i failed my cheese. haha. and i think i know what i did wrong. but my milk ended up clabbering (souring) instead of setting. so i can't even make a ricotta out of it. pfft. two-and-a-half gallons of milk wasted. yes, i'm going to try again tomorrow.
as i was writing the above paragraph i couldn't help but smile a little. perseverance. that's the answer rowling gave in response to the many requests for writing advice (as many aspiring writers tend to plague their heroes with such questions). that's all she said, just the one word, "persevere." and as i was rambling about my cheese and how i learned to cook, it struck me that failure is how i learn to persevere in my cooking and how i ultimately overcome the culinary obstacles that arise. the truth is, i've never failed at being a writer because i've never really tried. sure, i've written a couple crappy short stories for classes, but when it comes to what i really want to write, my novels, i'm so frightened of failure that i hardly give it a real shot. kind of ironic when in context with my cooking. *sigh* now if only i can get that through my head that failure can be an impetus of success. perhaps i should try to fail. i don't mean that i should sabotage myself -- i just need to give myself the opportunity to learn from my mistakes. because when it comes to it, the greatest failure is to never have tried in the first place. (hmm, that'd be a cool quote, but i bet someone else said it already.)
ok, it's late. i can't keep doing these late nights. big day tomorrow. have to renew my food handler's permit, give plasma, retry my cheese, and write! take care....
yeah, the high tomorrow is 43. that's missouri for you. and in case you were wondering, yes, the weather does directly affect the taste of soup. i made bananas foster last night because i'd never made them before and i wanted to try it. it was insanely fun. and i definitely singed off half the hair on my right hand and set off the fire alarms in the first floor of the house. but it tasted pretty good (the dessert, not the singed hair--definitely didn't taste that, but it smelled funny). i don't really like bananas, though. i should have thought of that first.