so, i cook dinner last night - chicken, artichoke and garlic pasta from an america's test kitchen magazine. the recipe sounded good. we like chicken, artichokes, garlic and pasta. the combination seemed enticing. um, well, no. not even a little actually. very rarely do i eat something i've cooked and think wow, that's bad. but this time i did. it was too salty and it just wasn't good.
so, as i was having this revelation i glanced over at shawn. he was making a face. i asked him what he thought, what the face was about? he said it wasn't a good face and then he took another bite. it was clear that he too thought this meal was decidedly not good. i was not prepared for what came out of his mouth next. "it tastes like vomit." that's right, vomit. don't adjust your monitors, you read that right. he said vomit. he said my cooking tasted like vomit. in the wide range of descriptive words between not good and vomit, he chose vomit.
vom·it /ˈvɒm
ɪt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[vom-it] (used without object)
| 1. |
to eject the contents of the stomach through the mouth; regurgitate; throw up. |
| 2. |
to belch or spew with force or violence. |
–verb (used with object)
| 3. |
to eject from the stomach through the mouth; spew. |
| 4. |
to cast out or eject as if in vomiting; send out forcefully or violently: The volcano vomited flames and molten rock. |
| 5. |
to cause (a person) to vomit. |
–noun
| 7. |
the matter ejected in vomiting. |
mind you, my dear husband has vomited probably 3 times in his life. so, i don't buy that he actually knows what vomit tastes like. i, however, am a puker. not proud of it but its a fact. i KNOW from puke. and what i was eating was not it. not good, yes. downright bad, yes. but vomit, no.
so, there are two issues here. my husband's poor choice of words and the recipe itself...
i did not deviate from the recipe but a smidge. i put a wee bit less lemon juice in it than it called for because master shawn does not particularly like lemon-y things. but that was the only change. so, wtf? like i said, an enticing combination of ingredients. almost no deviation from the recipe. and yet i produced a meal that my husband called vomit. i'm thinking this is not what america's test kitchen was going for with their mission statement "Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of
your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes
as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients,
technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the
best, most-foolproof recipe {that tastes like vomit.}"
and now back to my husband as his choice of words... this will bite him on the ass for years (probably just weeks) to come. this morning he was eating a chocolate chip cookie with his coffee. he offered me a bite. i looked him in the eye and said, "no thanks. i made it. it might taste like vomit." i turned and walked away. vomit, really? come on now.
vomit?
