Failure!
If you are going to fail, fail SPECTACULARLY!
I tell you, it was going great. I took pictures, I was excited, pumped even.
Everything was flowing great, the smells from the kitchen were tip top. It promised to be a dinner everyone would dig into.
Then it all went wrong.
I could smell burning sugar. Not a good sign. The crackling sounds of the Crock Pot did not bode well. My eyes spotted the lid doing a jig on the lip of the porcelain.
This was not good.
I looked inside, and horror of horrors – the ribs were zombified, and the sauce was dead. Perhaps the ribs fed on the sauce’s remains to stay alive, I don’t know.
I gingerly lifted the ribs out, and those that could be saved were set on a platter in the fridge. The sauce – well, a soak for a day rectified that.
What went wrong?
I made a custom barbecue sauce that was fit for a king’s feast. The problem was that I did not thin it out enough. A signature sauce, something to totally kick ass… ruined in the demon pot!
Next time I will thin out the sauce with a bit of vinegar and water.
The consolation is that my wife thought the ribs were “okay“. That is death to a chef. Okay is not good enough.
In life, experience is exactly this. Sometimes we have to fuck it up in order to learn how to do it right.
At the very least, that is how I learn.
How about you? Do you have any “failure” stories to share?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, lets see . . . cooking anything in olive oil at too high a heat, floppy fries, making a frittata and torching the spinach, burning pine nuts, cutting meat before properly resting . . . or the time I got road rash from a treadmill, but that’s another discussion altogether.
The good part is that I’ve rarely made the same mistake twice.
@Mike – Oh, the list can go on and on. In fact, I tell all my employees that my experience means that I have just screwed up more often than them.
Oh, I could entertain you ALL DAY with failure stories! LOL But I won’t, I don’t think either of us has the time.
I am sure that even your failure are way more than just “okay”. But thanks for sharing, may be someday I’ll be brave enough to show the blog world my disasters too. Mine would horrify you (of all people) into slack jawed zombie status. GREG
@Jan – Aww! Well, I understand. Failure is how we learn and grow though.
@sippitysup – LOL. My wife will not eat certain things that I make now because of past failures. I like a challenge, and look forward to one day seeing your failures. It is a brave thing to do to put it out there.