Cooking Catastrophes: Mac & Cheese edition

I love to cook. No, that's not really true... I love to bake. Anyone who wants to can cook dinner and I will bake dessert, ok?

I have had my share of cooking faux pas... like the time I was going to double the cookie recipe so I put in twice the amount of butter called for an then forgot to double everything else. It wasn't until the cookies turned out flatter than pancakes and slightly oily-looking that I figured out my mistake, and by then what can you do?

My most notable cooking catastrophe was the time I messed up the Mac & Cheese. I know you are thinking, "How do you mess up boxed pasta??" Well, I'll tell you...

My new husband and I we were both still in college, so we weren't exactly raking in the dough. I was new to the whole concept of having to come up with dinner EVERY night and having someone else eat my concoctions with me. One particular night I couldn't think of anything good to make for dinner.

Tentatively I ask, "Love, is it ok if we just have Mac & Cheese for dinner?"

"Sure." he replies.

Awesome... good man! I thought.

So I got down to business. I followed the directions and everything... I boiled the noodles the right amount of time, drained them, and then added the milk, butter, and cheese powder (Yum-O, right?).

My downfall occurred when I tried to get FANCY with the Mac & Cheese.

Mac & Cheese is SO boring... There has to be SOMETHING I can add to make it a little tastier. Hmm... oh! I know, season salt!

Not a bad idea, right? What I neglected to remember is that the taste of salt becomes stronger as food cools down. So the Mac & Cheese tasted fine when I added the season salt, but by the time I got it into the bowls and on the table it had cooled down quite a bit.

As we sit at the table I take a bite of my "gourmet" Mac & Cheese and nearly gag.

"So what do you think?" I ask.

"It's... um, interesting. What did you add to it?" He replies.

"Season salt... It's awful, isn't it?!" I said, letting him off the hook. We both started to laugh.

At first I was terribly embarrassed because WHO on earth can't cook Mac & Cheese? My attempt at creative cooking for my new husband had completely backfired.

But it we both got a really good laugh about it because it was so ridiculous. Honey Daddy teased me about that one for a LONG time. He told me that I wasn't allowed to make Mac & Cheese unsupervised. Hey, at least I didn't BURN it, right?

Apparently even thinking about cooking catastrophes can throw you off-kilter. I was thinking about writing this post yesterday afternoon while making bread. While the bread was raising I remembered that I forgot to ADD the salt that the recipe called for. Oh well! I guess maybe I have finally achieved some sort of cosmic saline balance or something. I just hope the bread is still edible!