Yuck!

I love to cook. I can spend hours on food blogs, searching for recipes. I love to roam Barnes and Noble with my frozen vanilla frappuccino (with hazelnut), perusing over countless "real" cookbooks and getting ideas for dinner. However, I am a safe cook. What is a safe cook, you ask? I don't mean the type that is sure to use hot-pads and always have a fire extinguisher close...though both things are a great idea. I mean the type that only cooks things that they know will turn out wonderful. Things that my friends/family have tried. Things that are made with only ingredients that will undoubtedly taste delicious together. Desserts that I can pronounce....etc. etc. etc. But. I love to eat new and exotic foods and I admire people so much that are willing to try (and sometimes fail), while trying out new recipes. My roommate is a prime example. She looks for dishes that are just outside her "scope of practice", and just goes for it. Because of her I have had things like shrimp gumbo, 40 clove garlic chicken (made with a whole chicken, mind you), and curried...well everything.

So. This week I decided to try a couple new things. Bright-eyed and hopeful, I carefully read the directions of how to use a charcoal grill. I adore grills. I generally love everything that comes off of them. But, with my grill-master of a boyfriend being thousands of miles away, I realized I had know idea how to start the thing. In hopes of preventing this becomming a "how not to grill" blog, I will spare you the details, but let's just say I have mastered the lighting of the coals, but have yet to learn the art of temperature control. So, I spent that evening eating a doughy pizza, charred black on the bottom.

My next challenge was to try a new ingredient. I found an awesome (looking) recipe with pasta, goat cheese, lemon, asparagus and herbs. Simple enough. I love all those things, except of course the goat cheese, which I haven't tried. How bad could it be?

Bad. Really Bad. Goat cheese is disgusting! So, instead of throwing away a whole dish, I rinsed the pasta and asparagus in hot water and put a "safe" alfredo dressing on it instead. And although my roommate loved it, I could still taste the goat cheese, so...I ate this:

After two failed attempts this week, I was feeling pretty down until I saw this on the counter:

And I remembered seeing this after coming home from work one day:

So, for all you safe cooks out there, don't give up! It's okay to make a disgusting thing or two! It's okay to burn things! It's okay to try new things and not love it! It's okay to experiment! And for all you amazing cooks who try new things and it always turns out amazing...you make me sick.