Always follow the recipe

So word on the street is I'm a good cook. I don't want to brag, but I don't get a lot of complaints.

Mostly cause the stuff I feed people (who don't live with me) is always my best work. I don't serve them the stuff that's burnt or that I forgot to add something too.

Cause for the most part, I am a good cook. I owe that to practice, the Food Network and the fact that my parents made the kids doing the cooking in my house growing up.

I could cook spaghetti for eight people when I was 12. Not that spaghetti is really high up on the difficulty scale.

But when I'm tired or distracted by a crying baby, I've been known to do dumb stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I put batter on the waffle iron, then glanced at the carton of eggs on the carton that I hadn't opened. So no eggs made it into the waffles. And it was too late to add them, since half the batter was on the waffle iron.

Then on Monday afternoon I made chocolate chip cookies. My recipe said 1 1/2 sticks of butter. Thats 3/4 cup. I only had one stick, so I used it and then added another 1/2 cup from the tub of margarine. Whoops. A stick of butter is 1/2 cup. Add that to the 1/2 cup margarine I added. And you have too much butter. By the time I realized it the batter was done.

So I decided to put a couple in the oven to see what happened. They were completely flat. Like cookie pancakes. But they tasted good. Really buttery.

I eventually managed to save them after I added more flour and a little baking powder. But they weren't the same.

David is still holding onto the one bad meal I made for him like seven years ago. It was grilled tenderloin with a spice rub. It wasn't good. I was still a rookie.

I wasn't exactly grilling tenderloin for dinner when I lived with my parents. We were more sloppy joes or lasagna kind of people.

But he can't let it go. He stills refers to it as "manure meat." When something I'm cooking doesn't sound good to him, he says "Remember the manure meat?" Thanks for the vote of confidence.

So my advice to myself when cooking is always the same.

Double check the recipe.

Don't forget ingredients.

Always remember you can't take back too much salt.

Don't cook when you're overtired or stupid.