I pride myself on being a pretty good cook. Granted lately I do more warming than actual cooking, or so my husband likes to point out. :| I can cook up a mean chicken pot pie and a great baked ziti when I put my mind to it. I recently got my husband to admit that MY pot roast is better than his mother’s. (It so is, btw)

I firmly believe that anyone can cook. All you have to do is be able to read and follow directions. Many of the things that I make, however, do not come with a recipe. They are my mother’s recipes that I’ve made so long I just know how to make them.

I generally set our menu for the next week on Sundays and then go do all the shopping for that week. This helps me to be sure we have food to be cooked all week long and I am not making a million little trips to the grocery store on weeknights. It’s hard enough to get everything done between the time I get off work and Boog’s bedtime that I don’t need to add errands in to that.

Occasionally I want to try something new. Last night I had put this on the menu to try. Boog has this thing that he won’t eat conventional pasta at home any more. He just looks at it and says no. I got him to eat a little bit last week by assuring him that the red sauce was in fact Italian ketchup. I thought I’d try this new sauce because it isn’t red and it is a variation of a cheese sauce. I though for sure it would be a hit.

I got cocky and too sure of myself. I also was in a hurry. I did not fully read the recipe before starting. Do you know what happens to yogurt and cheese when you put it in a pan that is still on heat despite the fact that the recipe clearly states that the pan should be REMOVED FROM THE HEAT? Yeah, it curdles and turns in to a nasty lumpy mess that I’m not even willing to try, much less my toddler.

So at 6:15 last night with an entire pot full of pasta boiling and 1 lb of shredded zucchini I found myself with a half ruined dinner. Luckily we still had some leftover red sauce and turkey meatballs from last week. Boog still wouldn’t eat the pasta and he wasn’t buying that Italian ketchup nonsense this week. He did eat some of the meatballs though. Note to self, if you’re going to try a new recipe on a weeknight, be sure the read the ENTIRE recipe before starting to make dinner.