The Up Side
photo by specialkrb
Thanks for all of your great comments on yesterday’s funny gym post. I’m thankful I don’t go to the same gym as some of you. Scary things happen.
In other news, I had all intentions of planning out my meals for the week and sticking to the list strictly—like my life depended on it. But you know what? When you’re only a mildly good cook (or a mildly sucky one, depending on how you look at things) you can’t count on not screwing things up. Like the night I burnt the roasting eggplant. Or when The Man and I got home at 8 p.m. one night and just felt like a bowl of cereal.
I’m telling you this because despite my planning and my lack of follow through, we’ve actually used up all of our groceries without throwing away some vegetables that had started to decompose in the far reaches of our fridge. Sounds like no big deal, right? Well, maybe for you. But for The Man and I things seem to spoil in warp speed. (OK, we might settle for cereal too many nights a week. I swear that will change as soon as I quit my job and become a professional socialite. I’m right on that…)
Though we didn’t fail at our stick-to-the-grocery-list plan this time, we didn’t 100 percent succeed either. But here’s the best part: We’re going to try again and again and again until we get it right. Don’t you love how life is like that? You don’t get thrown out for messing up or being lackluster. And as The Man told me a few nights ago: The world isn’t going to end if the eggplant burns. (Though I did spend a good deal of time arguing that it might.)
Here’s where I turn this food-related post into a life lesson (marvel at my cleverness): If you fall flat on your butt and fail, so what? Pick yourself up, throw out the blackened eggplant dust yourself off, and give it another go.
I’m logging off wonderful blog readers (did I ever tell you how super you are?). The Man has some work to do and since we’re one computer short—no, it didn’t die. It’s just in the hospital getting some diagnostics done—he gets dibs on it.
What’s your burnt eggplant moment? And, no, it doesn’t have to be related to food. I have many failures in other areas of my life. But we don’t have to talk about that here. Cough, knees. Cough, cough.
9 comments
This was a great post…one that I should definitelypay attention to! I am usually so hard on myself for any failure and my husband is constantly reminding me too that the world will not end because I “burned the eggplant”…I really liked this read. Puts things into perspective!:) Happy Thursday, Tracey!
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This is a great message! Picking up where we left off is key!
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I have so many eggplant moments…even recently when I made these oatmeal balls that Martha had on her site but I couldn’t find the recipe because her site was down, so I improvised and talk about disaster!! I was so irritated because I wasted so much good food!
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You know my motto is that if you never mess anything up, you aren’t challenging yourself enough. I am very competent in the kitchen and I got that way by burning the eggplant–and everything else–time and again. It’s corny but true–you learn from your mistakes. Just don’t give up on the eggplant. I get mine nice and brown without burning it by using a non stick skillet.
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I have too many to list. I like Joy’s comment above about learning from mistakes. That’s how I learned to cook – one mistake learned from at a time!
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I love your efforts with this. I just read an article that said more than 40% of the food produced for consumption goes to waste…that’s almost 1 out of every 2 items! I think we could all work on this. It would obviously help the environment and our pockets as well…and I’ve definitely had many food disasters…most frequently this occurs when I leave the lid off the blender and decide to hit the on button.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by notsuperhuman: Morning! New post is up: When things are crazy, here’s the up side http://bit.ly/cjeEdh…
haha i am in that stage of life right now where im trying to get in touch w. my “wife” qualities!!! soo im doing a lot of trial and error!
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You are so right that your good intentions and effort are all that count. I’ve had the burnt eggplant phenomenon. I just cry and then tell myself that it happens to everyone. Haha, no but I really do believe that it’s part of trying new things. Or just trying to do too many things at once. I struggle with wanting to accomplish eighteen things at the same time, so something inevitably must fail.
I’m getting better though. Now I just yell loudly, I don’t cry.
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