My sister Kasidy told me the other day, "you are a really good cook Ker, but when you fail, you do it spectacularly" -- Do I Ever!
I don't take it too personally anymore. You learn more from the times that you fail than the times that you succeed.
I had a birthday failure when I tried to make a huge layered cake for my mom.
I had forgotten about this casserole failure until I reread about it. I am sure glad I thought to share it with you.
So last week,, I was reading a very popular food blog than I follow. It is published by two women who are very good friends (and very good cooks). They have a super successful blog, they also have several published cookbooks and their own line of products. You would find it very easy to assume that they were past the stage of having kitchen fails - Especially with recipes that they were famous for!!
But one of the women posted that she recently discovered that her partner had never successfully made their famous dinner rolls, she in turn confessed that she had never been able to prepare her friends chicken taquitos.
Here they were, two very famous cooks, and each of them was still unable to prepare to their satisfaction a recipe that they were known for. I sat at my computer screen and grinned and grinned. I most probably looked really silly - but I felt so vindicated! Someone else was imperfect in their kitchen!!!
In the days of pinterest and food blogs and tv networks dedicated wholly to cooking, it is really hard at times to keep a realistic perspective. That every cupcake does not need to be involved in a war. That every dish does not need to be make with 27 ingredients. And sometimes dinner is just dinner - it might even be on paper plates... or plastic Ikea (kid) dishes!
Take Heart, Budding Chefs! Sometimes we will succeed and everyone will declare it the best thing they have ever eaten and leftovers will be gobbled up before you can count the minutes. And other times, we will fail, and our families will choke it down and say, "no thanks" to seconds and it will languish in the fridge until you finally kill it the day before the garbage man comes.
But most of all, We will keep trying. We will keep learning and growing and we'll win some and we'll lose some - and pretty soon we might even start to think of ourselves as Pretty Good Cooks.
