Worst Cooking Disaster -- Blogging Challenge

Here's a story for you, as part of that challenge I write posts about on occasion.

It's supposed to be about my worst cooking disaster, which I have had plenty of, overcooking, under cooking, over seasoning, under...well, you get the idea.

Let me start out by saying, that when I first married my husband, I just didn't cook.  Cooking was something that I just figured that I would never do.  My husband's grandmother still gives me a hard time to this day, about my bridal shower, where I received a lot of crucial kitchen supplies as gifts (it's like they knew me or something!).  Upon opening each one, I admired and appreciated each one, and then inquired about what it was, what it should be used for, and why.  All of these ladies, friends of mine, friends of my parents and mother in law, family, and more all probably thought that my poor husband to be was doomed to live a life consisting of hunger and takeout, and to be quite honest, for the first year or two, he did.  He cooked a little, so we did buy groceries on occasion, but most of our food money was spent on paying someone else to cook for us.

 That gets expensive, so eventually, I tried experimenting with boxed meals (think hamburger helper, and those meals that come in the box where you literally take all of the ingredients out of the box, open the cans, put it all in a casserole dish and plop it in the oven.)  Most of the time, I actually successfully prepared and served these items.  As silly as it sounds, this started my cooking adventures (if you ask those who eat my cooking regularly now, I am actually a decent cook seven years later).  I graduated to things like boxed rice shortly, and that's where one of my first memorable "cooking disasters" comes to play.

One night, my husband was working an overnight, and I decided I was going to surprise him with something to eat.  I took a box of rice out of the cupboard, cooked up some ground turkey and frozen veggies, and mixed in the rice (we really didn't have a lot of money at the time, so this was a common meal for us. The leftovers lasted just the two of us for days!) It smelled good, and looked appetizing, so I put it in a container, got in the car and proudly headed to the military police company.  I was proud and excited that, not only would I be able to feed my husband, but any other single soldiers that were hanging out that might like a "home cooked meal". 

When I got there, I took out a paper plate and served my husband some rice.  He was hungry and appreciative of this surprise meal.  He bit into it, and made a little bit of a face, looked at me, smiled, and ate some more.  I know my husband quite well, and felt it necessary to ask "what's wrong with your rice?"  Not wanting to hurt my feelings, he just said "here, try some".  I did.  The turkey and veggies were fine.  The rice was completely uncooked.  We put it in the microwave, figuring that it would cook it to the point of edibility, but that only produced crunchy, crispy, and dry rice. 

I threw the rice away, and promptly headed to the nearest drive thru to sustain my husband.

I know that there can be far worse disasters as far as cooking goes.  But, have you ever heard one of those songs where they talk about "eating burnt dinners the whole first year"? Because this is that kind of story, and my husband and I still joke about it (usually while we're eating properly prepared, completely edible, and probably even tasty rice.).