Daily writing prompt

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

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I haven’t thought about this in a long time and some of the details are hazy in my memory, but there is one epic cooking fail that jumps to mind, partly because it was a sort of public event.

I can’t remember if we were still living in the Duplex on Ashland Ave, or if we had already bought the house. Was it before or after Fall of 2010? I don’t know. I think it was in the old place. We invited our friends Larry and Nawal over for a cookout. The plan was for me to try to cook chicken breasts on the grill for the first time ever. Jen and I found a recipe online for a marinade that sounded really good so we went for it.

We whipped up the marinade and let the chicken breasts soak it in for however long the website said. Then, with our friends already on their way over to us, I popped them onto the grill in the back yard and followed the grilling instructions to the letter. I may have the timing off, and I may be over dramatizing the events, but I seem to remember needing to open up the top of the grill to flip the chicken for the first time coinciding with our guests pulling into the driveway. I could be wrong about that.

There was a healthy amount of smoke billowing out from under the closed grill’s cover, but nothing that seemed unusual. When I opened the top though… the entire interior of the grill was engulfed in a conflagration the likes of which I had never seen before. There was so much fire and so much crushing heat that I expected the very universe itself to start melting. The four gloriously marinated chicken breasts were burned to black cinders, though I do recall they still smelled really good. Our friends came into the back yard and saw me staring blankly at the inferno, unable to process what was happening.

I believe we ended up ordering pizza that night.

Daily writing prompt

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

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I’m late getting started this morning and I have a ton of things I want to do in a short amount of time so let’s make this one quick, m’kay?

The one thing I wish I had learned earlier in life is something that I am still trying to learn today. It’s simple. Don’t be afraid of everything. Don’t let fear run your life. So many things I didn’t do when I was young. So many things I missed out on just because I was a little afraid of them. If I have just let myself step out of my comfort zone, even a little bit, I would have experienced so many things. I don’t really believe that my life has lacked anything, I just let a lot of things slip past that would probably have turned into positive life events.

Stop being afraid, Robert. Let things happen and see how it goes. That’s what I would tell my younger self. I don’t know if it’s something I would pull off, but I would try to get that point across to my own dumb ass.

I’ve mentioned this before. In my post-gastric bypass world my food focus is on protein sources. Chicken, mostly, but also eggs and beef and various supplement type things. I just had lunch and it was just a protein bar.

Chicken might qualify for my current favorite, based on volume, but at the moment the true favorite is an example of me getting in touch with my Irish heritage via a silly stereotype. It’s potatoes. Anything potato based. Mashed, baked, French fries, home fries, hell even tater tots, which I never really liked much before. If it’s made out of a potato I’m loving it these days.

Another food in the running for current favorite is Ritz crackers. I feel like I’m regularly filling up my tiny new stomach pouch with them, though I suspect I’m really in it for the salt, and the crackers are just a salt delivery unit.

Also, a dark horse candidate is pizza. I don’t like tomatoes and I loath cheese (even the thought of cheese makes my skin crawl) but I do like cheese pizza. We’ve had it a couple of times over the last few weeks and each time has been basically heaven.

I was planning on having some chicken and either French fries or mashed potatoes for dinner tonight…. But maybe we will send out for some pizza.