Recipe FAIL, Part I

I decided to start a new, on-going series called "Recipe Fail". Being a scientist at heart, I cannot help but experiment with pretty much everything I ever make, especially food.

I always claim to follow recipes, website/document or cookbook open as evidence, but on very rare occasions does that actually occur (as my husband often laments). I'm on a quest to make healthy food that actually tastes good, which means that I almost never follow a recipe completely - whether it be removing fat or sugar or adding fiber or veggies. And then there are those times when I just really want to make X, but don't exactly have all the ingredients called for, but I have others I would REALLY like to use up. (We don't want them to go bad, do we?) As you can imagine, this often results in, let's just say "interesting" concoctions that I would choose not to replicate later.

And this happens a lot.

So, I figure, even if I run out of blogging material, I'll always have this to fall back on.

Without further ado, I begin my Recipe FAIL by recalling a very infamous time from my youth.... The first recipe FAIL I can recollect:

Back in the day, everyday after high school, I would come home and make a snack which was always one of four things:
1) 2 chicken chimichangas (from Costco)
2) 4 pieces of toast with butter and jam (usually my grandma's strawberry jam)
3) macaroni and cheese from the box (I always ate exactly half* and saved the other half for Eve to eat when she got home)
4) a package of graham crackers and milk (for dipping)

Which thing I made mostly depended on what was available, my mood, or the weather.

One particularly unmemorable day, I decided to make "The Mac", and as I always do, I put the noodles in the boiling water, set the timer for 7 minutes (no more, no less) measured out the 1/4 c butter, and started to measure the 1/4 c milk when.. OH NO!! WE ARE OUT OF MILK!!

Panic ensues.

The noodles were already boiling! What was I going to do? I frantically searched the refrigerator for something dairy to use as substitute. Cottage cheese? No. Yogurt? maaaaybe... and then it hit! One of my most favorite dairy products was sitting innocently in the freezer. Waiting for me to call on it for help. Indeed, we had vanilla ice cream. It's made from milk, right? They're both white, right?

It sounded like a great idea at the time.

Needless to say, that was a complete Recipe FAIL.

In summary:

Milk != Vanilla Ice Cream.


*except that one time when I was really mad at her. I can't remember why I was mad, but I remember that to spite her I ate the entire box of Mac myself. I felt very sick after.