Learning experience

You may not know it, based on most of the cooking experiences I share here on the blog, but many of my kitchen experiments are not successful. Some are ok, but a little off. Others are edible, but not all too appetizing. And once in a great while, I'll apologize to Matt after a few bites and ask him where he wants me to order pizza from.

But every time I mess something up, I try to take a look at the whole process and see where I went wrong. Sometimes it's something along the lines of "Don't drink the rest of the bottle when the recipe only needs a cup," haha. Other times, it's just a matter of my unfamiliarity with an ingredient or technique.

Yesterday, I tried out the enameled cast iron Dutch oven my parents got me for Christmas. And let me tell you something...cooking with cast iron is NOTHING like cooking with the reasonably priced cookware we already had. It was actually pretty alarming to use equipment that heats so quickly and evenly and generally just performs well.


So these pork chops actually weren't too bad. But they didn't cook well, and the sauce definitely didn't turn out, and then my blender broke so the other sauce didn't even happen. So I won't be sharing a recipe for casserole-sauteed pork chops from Julia Child's cookbook, with asparagus and a super-easy hollandaise this Friday. But the best thing about failing at a recipe? It gives you an excuse to keep practicing... :)