Tasteee

There have been many, many cooking debacles over the years.

It’s become a bit of my accepted personality within our family. If I put something on the stove, I’m going to go off and do something else. If substitutions have to be made, it’s best not to have me make the decision about them.

Food is mostly for fuel. Buddie is a fantastic cook, and I’m grateful for him, but I’m happy with a can of peas for my dinner. (Yes. I said “can.”)

There’s been a lot of cooking these last weeks at home, lots of baking, and several wins, and frequent losers. I’m generally fine with eating the losers, but this last week we had two huge misses that even I couldn’t gut my way through.

As chronicled many, many times, coffee is a ritual in our home. There’s generally a glorious cup of beautifully crafted cappuccino each morning.

I’ve changed up my ritual for health preferences, so no caffeine and no dairy. This makes it much tougher for Buds to craft the beautiful coffee drink he prefers to, but he’s always gloriously kind and generous about trying.

Unfortunately last week, we ran out of the purchased oatmilk I’ve been using for coffee, so I reassured Buds I would just whip up some homemade.

It was a little thicker than expected, but I was still game to give it a shot.

What was created was a form of oatmeal-flavored, coffee-gravy, that even I could not down.

If you’ve never seen the word “glop” personified…there you go.

Buds tried to take a picture with the spoon standing up, but couldn’t quite muster it.

Out of love for his kind effort, I did attempt to drink it.

Don’t ask how it went.

Then I was so excited for the next dish. In our CSA box we’d gotten beets and rutabaga and we had sweet potatoes and cauliflower. All that glorious veggie goodness, ready to be enjoyed in some smashing way.

So I googled up “Veggie Torte” and found a delightful recipe.

I can’t even try to be funny and explain my thought process in creating the recipe. I followed the recipe, mostly…

But when the recipe says, “Use an assortment of vegetables and season accordingly.”

I have no “accordingly” part to my brain.

An assortment of vegetables means whatever is most likely to go bad next out of the fridge.

The bèchamel sauce looked good, and who doesn’t love caramelized onions? (Besides Buster.)

There was a hilarious moment where I had to ask Buds come help me lift the creation in to a baking dish because I’d been making it on a cookie sheet for some reason that can only be explained as a brain floof.

It baked up fine. I didn’t forget it in the oven.

But, Oh, MY, GOSH! It tasted so bad.

Pasty and veggies? And white sauce? How can it taste bad?

It even looked pretty…gloppy.

I might have gotten a clue from realizing that pre-baked and post-baked don’t really look very different.

They probably didn’t taste very different, either.

I was bemoaning to Buds afterward, “How could it taste that bad? It was good veggies? Sweet potato? Beets? What’s not to love?”

“How many beets?” he inquired.

“Six,” I replied. “It was all of them.”

The beet hater replied, “Well, you’ve figured out your own problem right there.”

I tried to eat it, but eventually over the fence it went.

I think I’m just glad we didn’t waste the vegetables. And now I can say I’ve cooked a rutabaga.

To add insult to indigestion, someone shared a picture of their veggie torte:

Onward to my next cooking adventure.

Edited to add uplifting words from Best Buddy Gina:

“Your pictures of the latest cooking adventure are hilarious, but that torte recipe was sketchy AF. I don’t think you are to blame here. It was basically flour and water in two different ratios with maybe a bit of pepper and salt. You basically made play-doh and gelatinous play-doh then layered it with veggies, which didn’t stand a chance against the all that unflavored flour. Your bravery is nevertheless entertaining.”

And then she attached a playdough recipe.

I love my friends.