The only reason I can come up with for my many and varied failures at cooking is that I’ve got a diagnosable form of insanity. I know how basic logic operates, yet time and time again, I find myself ignoring the physical laws in place in our world. I would say that I’ve still got time to learn, but I’ve been living on my own and caring for myself for a full decade now, so I’m starting to wonder if it’s something that I just can’t do? I’m going to present exhibit A to you here, but know that exhibit A is not unique. It is just one in the long, messy string of food-related failures I call my own. Now I like to watch the cooking channels and I like to chop and saute vegetables… although the chop part usually starts disintegrating pretty quickly. After that, though, everything starts to go downhill. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have the right equipment… sharp knives, expensive stand mixers, clean dishes… or whatever, but once I get to the stage where you’re supposed to start putting stuff together, it all goes to shit. Today started out with a few minutes of happiness chopping up and sauteing an onion. Cooking up the ground beef and pouring some tomato sauce in the pan were pretty alright, too. But, as fate would have it, I guess my crockpot is about half the size of whatever internet asshole I got this recipe from was using. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal, but when it comes to food, I have a weird depression-era mindset that makes it very hard for me to waste anything. So, even though I realized about half way in that there was going to be a problem (remember, I do have basic logic skills), I kept piling the tomato sauce up. I started moving away from the edges of the pot, obviously recognizing those as danger zones… but I just couldn’t cope with leaving any substantial amount of the sauce/meat in the pan, in my mind, it clearly all deserved to make it into the crockpot, onto the winning team. Anyway, by the end of this dance with the tomato sauce devil, I was looking at Mount Saint Lasagna. And here is where I start to really think I might have a mental condition exacerbated by cooking. I looked at it… was able to quickly assess that there was no way to put the lid on this, and then rather than spooning some out, I just dropped that lid right on. It’s like a small cooking devil sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear that it’s okay, the laws of space (mass? physics? he’s not a smart devil.) actually don’t apply to me. For me, things will be different. When I put the lid on, a bit of magic will take place and everything will fit. This is not true, clearly, but the cooking devil does what it will and I end up with the same mess I made last time. It’s still in there cooking right now. I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back in there since cleaning it up the first time, but I assume it’s eaten one of my dogs by now.