What A Failure

Before I moved to Texas, I hated cooking. My ex husband made it seem like it was a mandatory thing to do and I always ended up having to cook for his friend. I wouldn't have had an issue with it, but his best friend was over every single night. Plus my ex never quite gave me the compliments that I wanted, so everything was half-assed. I made it healthy enough since I was pregnant, but I never tried to do anything spectacular.

After I moved to Texas, I actually wanted to cook. The original agreement was that Daylan would cook and I would do the dishes. Of course that never happened. I ended up being in charge of both. I did manage to find a few recipes online that I wanted to try, and before I knew it, I was beginning to like this whole 'Woman over the stove' thing. Most of what I made were chicken recipes, but I do have other recipes stored in my laptop with other types of meat. I just have yet to try them. The thing that mattered the most was that Daylan actually would compliment me on the dishes. They were creative and they tasted good. We rarely had left-overs, no matter how much I would cook.

Tonight I was wanting to do something completely made from scratch. I found three recipes I wanted to do and the one I was the most excited for was a stuffed ravioli with spinach and ricotta cheese. Everything would be made from scratch. The pasta, the filling, the sauce. I hadn't ever tried to do that before. I had never tried to make my own pasta. I thought it would be really neat. I was looking forward to it. The grocery bill was pretty high because everything I bought was completely healthy. It was what I needed for the three recipes, plus my basics.

Well, I began to make everything according to the recipe and never bothered to read it past the ingredients. I made the dough, which was a pain to make. It was messy and it got everywhere, including me. I can't tell you how many times I had to wash my hands. I made the mix. I even had to flatten the dough. The only problem is that the dough wouldn't stick to each other no matter how hard I pressed it together. The filling ended up not staying inside the pockets in the pasta. Yeah, like I said, it was a pain.

The whole process was an utter disaster! The recipe didn't say how long anything was supposed to boil in the water and then I had to pan fry it.Since when do you pan fry ravioli? It never said how long I was supposed to do that. It didn't say at what temperature everything was supposed to be. It also never mentioned that it would smoke my whole house up to do it in a pan. The ravioli ended up being hard. Not only that, but it was so bland! It didn't even look like the picture. The picture looked delicious and what I made clearly wasn't even close. I even added extra seasoning and it still tasted like....garbage. I was so angry! I literally cried. Even if I didn't cry from anger, I would have cried from the smoke. It was a good thing I didn't have smoke detectors in the house.

My cooking still isn't up to par with a chef, but it has always turned out to be pretty good. I knew the thing I really needed to work on was my food presentation. I was actually beginning to take pride in what I was cooking. This was the first meal that I was so disappointed with. It took about two hours from start to finish to get everything done and I was hoping that it would turn out well. I would rather something that only took half an hour to make to be horrible.

Needless to say, I should have taken a better look at the recipe but I also shouldn't have became so upset. I shouldn't have taken that one dish so personally but I was so invested in it. To top it off, it was a waste of money. A whole bag of spinach, a whole container of ricotta cheese, a pack of Parmesan cheese, a bunch of butter (to pan fry everything), 8 eggs and close to six cups of flour was wasted for something that went straight into the trash. Daylan even tried to eat it with Alfredo sauce, but the instant he saw me throw it all away, he quickly hopped on that bandwagon. Daylan is a human garbage disposal and even he couldn't eat it. That says a lot.

It took my watching Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium to actually feel better. Well, that and a post that my friend, Kristen, posted. It certainly was a cute movie. Gabriel will love it. I really should try to find that for him :).

Next time I want to try to make something similar, I will actually read the recipe more thoroughly to see if it even sounds right. I still want to try to make it, but I will do it at a different time. I will make sure it sounds like it will taste good. I don't want to go and waste  products for something that won't even be edible. God, what a waste!