And now for something different

I have said that cookery is my art. It becomes an art through belief in yourself and experimentation. There's a certain fearlessness required.

That means you will make bad food. If you use good ingredients and pay attention to cooking time, it probably won't be terrible or inedible. But at some point you're going to make a meal where you take a bite and look at your fork and say, "what hath I wrought?"

This is fine. It will happen less and less as you learn just why soy sauce and vanilla aren't usually used in the same dish. A new stove will probably bring a two week streak of over, under, or oddly cooked food, but, once you adapt to each other, chances are it won't happen again.

There will be the occasional recipe that reads well but tastes wrong. Toss the recipe or adapt it. With experience your mistakes will be fewer and fewer.

What does one do about the ego hit, though? How does a person who has just burned water recover?

I watch "Semi-Homemade With Sandra Lee" on the Food Network.

I don't usually make fun of the afflicted; it's a low form of humor. But this woman is trying to give advice on cooking and clearly has no idea what she's doing.

There is comfort in the idea that no matter how bad my meal accidentally turned out, it's no where near what Sandra Lee has done on purpose. Seriously, I think one of her recipes involving frozen meatballs contravenes the Geneva Convention.

I have laughed harder at her show than at most comedies. Over at TWoP, if you go to the early days of the thread called "Open Letter to Sandra Lee" you can find the restraining order I took out on behalf of the French government for creating a souffle with no eggs. Her "French Pastry" dessert began with pound cake and instant custard mix.

gileswench can testify to the Christmas episode that I made her watch and the scary, scary cocktails.

As a matter of fact, Sandra Lee's presentations make me feel better about mine. Mine are basic, but they're about the food. Hers are fancy, themed, and over the top.

An example: In the aforementioned Christmas episode, she prepares a snowball cocktail. It uses blue brandy, which I understand as the shadows on snow have a distinctly bluish cast. However, the blue brandy isn't diluted much giving it a definite Tidy Bowl hue. She pours it in a glass rimmed with flaked coconut giving the overall drink a disconcerting aura of flecks of toilet paper around the bowl.

edited to add: I found the recipe at Food Network and there's a picture!

No one can top that.