Epic FAIL

It doesn't happen often but when it does, it is really bad. I'm not talking about earaches, sick kids or tornadoes, I'm talking about a oft-prepared dish that simply goes totally awry. Last night it was a basic, very basic, bolognese.

Yesterday turned out to be a long, loooooong day. We picked up and installed the new dishwasher. The installation started oddly as the instructions are packed inside the machine but the door wouldn't open. Since there were no instructions anywhere in sight, I looked up the Maytag site and they did have .pdf copies of all necessary stuff. Turns out, unbeknownst to all but actual repair people, the door is held shut by a piece of metal underneath it that must be removed before you can get to the instructions. Uh HUH. I see. After taking the 90° brass fitting and power supply cord from the old dishwasher, Himself proceeded to wire, attach and finagle things until, at long last, the machine was installed and working fine. Then we discovered that, even after thinking of absolutely everything, the silverware drawer won't open because the dishwasher can't be flush-mounted. OK, switch drawers around, no problem.

This was a good opportunity to go through my utensil drawers and sort them out. Have the contents in two tubs and, if I don't use them within 6 months, out they all go! woowoo.

Then scrub the kitchen cabinets and floor, clean out under the fridge, haul about 7 loads of laundry up and down, monitor a trip to an emergency room 100+ miles away made by DS1 and DIL, after which time it was nigh on supper time. Digging around in the freezer brought no brainstorms, we have no prepared soup so soups and grilled cheese was out. What to do?

Ahhhhh! The old stand-by, pasta. Well, it's usually a standby.

This time it turned out SO bad words fail me. Everything went as it normally does:

• onions
• garlic
• tomato paste
• tomatoes
• herbs
• salt
• pepper
• etc etc etc*

Turned out just horrible. I don't always put wine in the sauce so that isn't the problem. The onion and garlic were fine. Herbs fresh and flavorful. Ground meat as usual, nothing odd there. That leaves the tomatoes. But what was wrong with the tomatoes?

I preserve tomatoes 3 different ways. Cook some down pretty far then bag the results to go in the freezer. This I did with the fruit we grew down on the terraces. The remaining yield is made into stewed tomatoes and chunky tomatoes, which are then pressure canned. I normally use one jar of stewed and one jar of chunky but, for no apparent reason, put two bags of the frozen in on top of the canned. The result was so bad that DS3 wouldn't eat it. It's back on the stovetop while I try to figure out some way to rescue it as I really hate wasting food. It's bland, watery and simply has no "oomph." Phooey.

That, in and of itself, was disheartening enough. Adding insult to injury was the fact that, like a moron, I used salted butter for the garlic bread and it turned out so salty it's inedible. Can't even give it to the birds.

Like I said, epic FAIL.


* Told you it was very basic.