My Big Fat Kitchen Fails

 I spend a lot of time cooking and it’s not all wonderful. I've had a lot of “fails” these past two months. I made a lemon tart (for my BFF’s birthday) that sucked and then I made a replacement dessert – a light and luscious lemon cake that was overly sweet, dense, and inedible.

Looks good until you pick it up, then it falls apart!

I should know better but sometimes I just plunge ahead without giving the recipe more thought. (Fools rush in?) The recipe for Sweet Tater Black Bean Burgers looked absolutely delicious. However, it was from a blogger whose recipes were not tried and true. I was worried that the recipe might turn out too sweet which is sometimes the case when you use sweet potatoes. It had a great flavor. It just didn’t hold together. Rule number one when making a veggie burger is it has to keep it’s shape.

Here's an Arugula Tart. Boy did I have high hopes for this one. The crust was so interesting, made out of corn meal, rice flour, millet flour, and corn flour. Try rounding up all those flours! I actually ended up grinding some on my own. The dough was very hard to work with. The filling was soy free (no tofu!) and made with cashews which I was very excited about. In the end it was a whole lot work for a rather unremarkable tart.

Hmmm. I don't remember what kind of cobbler this was 

but there's some kind of oatmeal dribbled on the top.

More kitchen fails:

The Egg-Free Vegan Potato and Carrot Kugel that was rather gummy.

The Cheezy Vegetable Lasagna that was mediocre which isn’ such a big deal but when you have a whole pan of it to get through, well, I’m still pulling leftovers from the freezer.

The Cantaloupe Sorbet that was sickly sweet.

The Blueberry Ice Cream made with the Mimic Cream that just didn’t cut it. It’s still sitting in the freezer ’cause I can’t bear to eat it or toss it!

Here’s the moral of this story: I came across this little homily in a book I’m reading right now, Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. It really made an impression on me.

“Our perfection lies in our inperfection.”

I'm going to apply that to all the food I make, and then it’s all good. Even when it’s not perfect.