Dinner FAIL

So, to preface this, I'll begin by saying that I really like to cook.  I don't know if I'm a great cook, but hey, I LIKE it, and that's got to count for something, right?

No matter how much you like to cook, sometimes things just take a turn for the worse.  Or, in this case, maybe like seven turns for the worse.

Greg and I were dinking around this afternoon after we were done with homework, trying to decide what to have for dinner.

Me: Greg, just pick something! I'll make whatever you want.

Greg: I don't care.  Make whatever YOU want.

Me: Okay, we're having baked potatoes.

Greg: (Silence).  I don't WANT that.

After about 45 minutes of this, I started flipping through a cookbook.  Because some people get inspiration from cookbooks, you know? And maybe I could be one of those people.

And then I saw it.  The perfect recipe.  Fettuccine alla Carbonara. Basically white sauce with bacon in it. Hey, that's my favorite pasta at Pizza Pie Cafe!  And I even have all the ingredients!  Let's do it!

On weekends, Greg so obligingly helps with dinner (sometimes).  His chore today: cook the bacon.  Usually he's very good at cooking bacon.  Because he really likes bacon.

That was the first FAIL.

Me:  So...how did this happen?

Greg: I have no idea.  One second, it was fine.  The next second...dead.

Well, you can't blame Greg.  Because I didn't do much better.

The recipe said you had to time cooking the noodles with finishing the sauce, so that you could just pour the sauce immediately over noodles.  I didn't have fettuccine on hand, but I can use garden spirals, right? Yeah, all pasta tastes the same. So I was doing great...had my pasta almost cooked, got the sauce on the stove. The recipe said DO NOT BOIL the sauce, which was made of milk and eggs.  I've made a few cream pies before--enough to know there was a danger of cooking the eggs too fast and getting little cooked egg pieces and stuff like that.  So, hey, I've cooked cream pie.  How hard can this be? So I very obediently sat there gently stirring my sauce over medium heat.  It was supposed to take six minutes until the sauce coated the spoon.

But after like three minutes, the sauce started boiling. What the heck?  Stop that!  What do you do if you don't go the full six minutes?? Is this sauce "coating a metal spoon"? What does that even mean, anyway?!? And my pasta isn't done yet!!

The sauce ended up looking like this.  I'm not sure the picture does it justice:

Yucky and curdled. Basically chunky milk with a bad egg smell.

I have no idea how it tasted, because neither Greg or I had the courage to eat it.

Good thing I have some of this on hand:

I threw in the torched bacon for good measure.  Because bacon is bacon, you know?

Bad idea.

This picture doesn't do it justice either, but it was weird.  Charcoal bacon in red sauce is weird.

Greg's running commentary at dinner: Are we going to end up at Chick-fil-A?  What are these squirelly chunks in here?  Is that the bacon?  Did you put in the bacon? It looks like it's covered in...blood. That's what it is, covered in blood.  Can we please go to Wendy's?  I'm still going to be hungry after this.  No offense, babe, but this is probably the worst meal you've ever cooked the whole time I've been married to you.

Yeah.  He said that. I'm going to take that to mean that most of the meals I cook are DE-LISH.

Good thing I've learned to laugh at myself because that's what I was doing.  Laughing, and NOT EATING.

Greg: Hey.  You know what?  The corn is good.

Yes, I CAN warm up corn from a can, people.

Thank you, thank you.  No applause, please.