Top Six Fails at Dinner

1. The time I substituted bok choy for silverbeet in a silverbeet, onion and olive bake, not reckoning on how watery that piss poor excuse for greenery is, and ended up with a dish full of vague vegetable-ish water rather than the Balterranean mouth party I was hoping for.


2. The time I added kalamata olives to a soft polenta which I'd been stirring over a hot stove for 45 minutes, and then realised that they tasted like chlorine mixed with seasoned flour, and made the rest of the dish taste like that too, and hence required pizza to be ordered for dinner. Extra points awarded because they'd come from a massive tub that I'd bought from our local fruit shop at the time and had to chuck the rest out.

3. The time when we had no potatoes and no pasta and no rice and no bread I only discovered this AFTER the bloke started cooking roast beef on the Weber for dinner, so substitutional genius that I am, I served the cattleflesh with an Asian noodle and pumpkin salad. This did nothing to convince me of the merits of fusion food, just in case you were wondering. To make matters worse we had a friend around for dinner that time, and it was the first time I'd cooked for him. LUCKY WE HAD HOMEBREW TO WASH IT DOWN WITH.


4. The time where one of the stove elements in our East Sydney terrace exploded, blowing a hole through the paella pan that my parents received as a wedding present and ruining the bolognese sauce cooking within. I don't need to explain to you how terrifying it is to know that your kitchen has the power to blast a hold through half a centimetre of frypan, do I?

5. Any time I've used chorizo. In fact, the other day I put chorizo on my list of five things I could easily go through life without eating again, along with caraway seeds; haloumi; pork broth; and perch.

6. Last night, where after hand-shredding half a kilo of potatoes for kartoffelknoedel, and attempting to overcome my fear of haloumi, I finished dressing one of the dinner plates, turned around and promptly had it take a face plant off the kitchen bench onto the tiled floor. SUCKS. Only the fact that I was hopped up on codiene saved the kitchen from taking a trashing last night. Instead I just stood and looked at the shattered plate on the floor then went and had a sulk in front of the heater.