What blogging has taught me so far..

We've only been blogging for a very short time, yet one object lesson is already painfully clear: whenever you plan to blog something, it comes out awful. And when you don't plan to blog (as in you decide while you're eating dinner) the food comes out great. Just like all other aspects of life, right?

I planned to blog making a clafouti. those who know me know that I have a mortal terror of making cake (a justified terror, I tell you). I was convinced that for some reason this time ould be different and the cake would be delicious. And easy. I already had the blog intro composed in my mind as I put the cake lovingly into the oven. And then reality struck.

I think it looks pretty:

But pretty is as pretty does, as they say. Unless you think gummy and tasteless is beautiful, this cake ain't pretty. I even was going to blog my failure, but then the same weekend Wild Yeast published her failure to make a cookie and I slunk off into the sunset.

The next night, discouraged by my failure to even make a clafouti, not to mention the waste of perfectly beautiful peaches and blueberries, I turned to comfort food: gnocchi. Just a quick, quiet supper for me and the monkey. And these babies were GOOD! Some of the best gnocchi yet. IMHO.

Do I have a picture to show? Nope. Blogging it never crossed my mind 'til the first bite. And at that point, I just wanted to eat my dinner while it was still warm. But I owe you a gnocchi post.

Later, we made a really nice couscous tagine with homemade merguez and artichokes. I managed to capture a furtive picture of it before it was devoured. Nothing hugely special in the big picture, but a great dish that is inexpensive, fast, healthy, tasty and uses up random leftover vegetables.. all in all a win. But not a planned win.

The other lesson being that I think to really successfully blog, you need to either endure cold dinner after the photography is done (not going to happen), just blog everything whether it's tasty or not (not really where I want to be either), or re-create your success at some later time for the camera (perhaps, but I can see that getting out of hand too..).

About a year ago, my hairdresser told me that cataracts were starting to interfere with her vision. When she looks at something directly, it becomes occluded. But when she just glances out of the corner of her eye, then she sees fine. She now spends her days sneaking furtive glances at objects in order to see them. I think that's true for me in terms of cooking. Only if I pretend I am not looking do I find success.