wonderful disasters

I'm starting to notice a trend when I try out a recipe that's new to me. The first time I make the food, it's pretty delicious. The dish itself may not look the best, but all qualms disappear once I take my first bite.
Then I try it again.
This is where things go wrong.
But it's okay! Because I know exactly why they go wrong.


Here's what happens-
I make something, using the recipe. The food comes out okay, but I decide to experiment the next time through. The most recent examples of this equation in action would be the lentil stew and strawberry cupcakes recipes that I tried out. For the cupcakes, I decided to mix recipes- one using box mix, and the other from scratch. Didn't work as well as I'd hoped. For the lentil stew I decided to semi-cook the lentils ahead of time, since the last time I made it the cook time was around five hours due to the lentils. That wasn't a great idea either. Then I added chick peas, except they needed to be soaked/ cooked longer, and now they're the ones holding up the party that should be in my mouth.


Does any of this mean that I'm going to stop changing things up, stop experimenting?

NOPE.

In my humble opinion, that's kind of what this is all about.
Everything.
Those cliche sayings are cliche for a reason. I'm not going to list them all, there are so many and I honestly have no desire to beat any dead horses.
But... "Failure is just another form of success."
Someone said that, right?
It's not true at all in some cases, but let's argue that failure is a way of helping us learn how to succeed. Next time I make lentil stew, I'll probably just soak the lentils overnight like I did the first time. And I'll get canned chickpeas instead of dried ones. That probably had something to do with it.

I guess the point of this post is just to remind myself not to give up.



Also, to share the lentil stew recipe because it is THE BEST THING EVER. Really.
I essentially took this recipe and just changed a few things up. Mostly it was the spices, because I'm a big fan of just overdosing on spices, but I also added real garlic. Really, my rule for recipes is to just do what I want to make it how I think I want it to taste. I used more cumin, turmeric, curry powder, dried chili pepper flakes, and ground hot pepper. Also two bay leaves, but those need to be taken out before serving. maybe a few other things I'm forgetting, but the point of all this was to point out that you can tailor a recipe to fit your preferences.


ANYWAYS.


Good luck, friends! I hope you succeed in whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, and the only failures you experience are minor and not at all life-altering, with maybe a dash of life lesson thrown in for good measure.