Not All Greens are Good for You.

It's not often that I have a flop in the kitchen.  Though I'm not a great cook, I'd say that I'm a consistently good cook.  I think Geoff would agree if only because he wants to keep eating.  But I've had some misses along the way...like a few nights ago.  I tried a new recipe (from Canadian Living online) for what I thought would be a delicious broccoli/onion/potato soup.  It was easy to make, and the finished product was awfully purdy in its creamy shade of green-ness.  This recipe's a keeper, I thought.  I sprinkled some sharp cheddar overtop, and served it with fresh baguette.

Well, the recipe might have been a keeper, but the soup, unfortunately, was not.  It was rancid.  Though the broccoli had looked fine as I put it into the pot, it was - shuuuddder - some new definition of awful.  Granted, it had been sitting in the fridge for just over a week, but to be honest, I've had successes with broccoli of greater vintage than that before.  Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have admitted that.

Bless him, Matthew gamely (or defiantly, because I said it tasted terrible) ate a few mouthfuls, declaring optimistically and enthusiastically that "mom, it's really quite good - if it just didn't have broccoli in it, it would be awesome!"  Alas, it all got poured down the garburator.  Our dinner became baguette and cheese, served with a glass of cold milk...later, we pulled out the peanut butter, too, and polished off the entire loaf!

As we chuckled over our dinner, Geoff and I recalled what was, in my opinion, the worst meal I've ever cooked...made in the very early days of our marriage when I was still in a state of shock that dinner actually had to be thought about and prepared on a daily basis.  I was proud to be serving my mother-in-law a delicious dinner, featuring a new lemon chicken recipe that today I would have prepared in minutes but on that day I had laboured over. Unfortunately, I was required for a moment in the kitchen just as mom starting eating, so she had taken at least one bite before I tried my first mouthful.  I spit the mouth-puckeringly sour, tooth-breakingly-hard, something's-seriously-wrong-with-this chicken right back out, and told Geoff and his mom to stop eating.  My still-new-mother-in-law, who was probably trying to encourage her new daughter-in-law's dismal culinary efforts, kept plugging away at it, declaring through her mouthful, in her sweet British accent, that dinner was "lovely indeed."  That poor woman chewed and chewed and chewed, with not much identifiable success.  She probably would have gone on forever, in her ever-supportive good nature, had I not forcibly taken her plate away from her and dumped it!  I have no recollection of what we ended up eating, but that was the (first and) last time I ever tried to make lemon chicken.

Given how much I love most versions of broccoli soup, I'd be surprised if some version of that dish didn't appear on the menu plan again in the coming weeks...but next time, I'll make sure I sample the broccoli before putting it into the pot!