Being the Secret Ingredient: The Follies, Failures and Findings of a Culinary-School Dropout Determined to Write her own Recipe for Success

Whoever you are, there comes a point when you realize that if you want to succeed in life, you have to be the secret ingredient in your own recipe for success.

Then...if you're like me, shortly thereafter comes the point when you realize your knives are all rusty and you're out of flour and eggs....

The Setting: another Friday in my messy Florida apartment

The Soundtrack: Mariah Carey Merry Christmas. On Repeat.

On the Stovetop: White Bean Turkey Chili on one burner and Turkey Remoulage on another.

The Scenario: If you cook you know the feeling: you've just tested a new recipe, and the bread is in the oven, and it's started filling your home with delicious, yeasty aromas that smell of the American dream and the promise of world peace and personal prosperity.

You wait with mouth-drooling anticipation, knowing that one bite of this perfect, hand-crafted, crusty loaf will restore balance to the world.

Then the moment comes: you run to the oven door as the timer sounds, inhale the glorious, soul-purifying steam, reach in with your big, goofy, oven-mitted paws, and pull out your creation.

Beaming like a proud, new parent, you wait for the first true glimpse as the steam dissipates, and....

It looks like a bread-colored rubber raft.

Eww--tastes like it, too.



Well, today is Friday, which would normally be cause to turn cartwheels of elation across my apartment floor, but I was supposed to hear back about a job I couldn't have been more perfect for by the beginning of the week--if, that is, I was selected to continue in the recruitment process.
I made it through round one: my mise en place was perfect, all the ingredients were ready and set to go. I followed the recipe for round two, completing a lengthy creative project by a specified deadline, and I was already smelling the aromas of sweet, interview-securing success.
But it's Friday: far past the beginning of the week, officially to the end.
The oven-timer has sounded, and I'm begrudgingly biting into bread-colored rubber.

The good news: Life is not a one-course meal.
Figuring out the best recipe to showcase my secret ingredients will likely require a lot of taste-testing. I have decided to catalog my efforts because I need a palate cleanser while I figure out what the next course will be.
So pull up a chair if you want, and I'll serve you a hearty helping of whatever comes out of the oven along the way.
I've made a lot of rubber in my life, but I haven't stopped cooking yet.