Culinary Failure.....

These week , I am going to come right out and say it....This week my desserts have been awful. The pumpkin pie, I left the foil on the edge of the crust too long and it didn't brown properly, My sweet yeast bread cinnamon Buns.FAILURE. I don't know where I failed there because these are fail proof buns but I failed. It was terrible. They just weren't quite ''right''

The squirrels even snubbed them this morning. But my hunger for desserts prevails. Ok I did succeed with one thing this week and that was a meat loaf recipe that came out so surprisingly well my son said that he LOVED it and wanted me to make it ALL the time:) I made it with Whole Wheat Nut Bread instead of bread crumbs and I also made my own Barbecue sauce for it. Whatever it was it did the trick.

Ok back to desserts! So I am guilty. I went out tonight and got boxed Carrot cake and pre-made frosting. I am going to mix the Dunkin Hines Frosting with a half a package of cream cheese because the pre-made Cream Cheese Frosting never tastes like homemade with the tang of the cream cheese. I don't know why that is but I am going to try throwing the cream cheese in with it to see how that goes.

So I am ashamed of my boxed cake but I won't be ashamed to scarf down a labor free Carrot Cake with loads of frosting.

I just don't know why my desserts are failures lately. Actually I know. It is always some little thing. I gave my pie away. It is edible. Someone else might even say it was good , but it just wasn't good *enough.

So out of sweet tooth desperation I have resorted , this week anyway , to boxed cake.

But next week I return....Martha Stewart's Cream Cheese Pound Cake is going to be my birthday cake. I'm making it...I don't care...It is some good cake. Seriously good cake.

It must be some form of culinary Karma

I am so confused. See I seem to have on my hands a picky eater and I cannot , for the life of me comprehend why. I was raised by a chef and literally spent half my childhood in a restaurant after school. I have had so many different foods passed under my nose that I can count on one hand the foods that I either dislike or won 't try. I am NOT a picky eater by any stretch of the imagination besides the fact that I don't often care for 'cheaply' made foods, Doritos are excluded from the category of cheap food because I DO enjoy junk food.

But on to the wee picky eater in the house. Oy, it does frustrate me at times. There are so many foods that he does not like. Chicken must be a certain way. Soup , we are down to only a few that he will eat. Vegetables must be disguised or he would only eat corn and potatoes. I could go on but this is basically your average picky eater story. Here is where it gets weird............

He likes food from different cultures. He is picky against AMERICAN food. Ok I can't say that I totally blame him. But it makes shopping confusing. Ok he will eat Japanese Edamame(steamed Soy beans) but won't eat string beans, Won't eat certain types of fried fish but will eat sushi, Loves Chinese food, Loves spicy food, and adores East Indian food. Adores the Indian shops alone even. Again I can't say I blame him. But what I mean is that the cultural food is often more adventurous and even then if I don't make the Chicken Yogurt Curry and Saffron rice EXACTLY right , he won 't go for it. The recipe has to be just so.

For lunch he had a spiced Onion Indian bread and a large bowl of cottage cheese which he liberally spread on the bread. Last night he out right refused to eat turkey and stuffing lol. So I am going to once again attempt a transition from American Cuisine to a more Asian/ Asian Indian cuisine.

I am not the best chef but I have some experience . I just have a hard time getting the hang of Asian cooking. It is really an art. But I have a enough Basmati to feed the whole block,and a cabinet chock full of exotic spices/and growing, on top of a growing collection of Indian recipe books that I can maybe make a stab at the semi transition once again. For the sake of my strangely picky little boy and his suffering limited palate.

Macaroni and Cheese , Roast Chicken and Mashed potatoes and corn are all well and good, but like I said, I grew up in a chef home and picky I am not, adventurous palate I am. Oh did I mention he likes flounder baked in cream and dotted with onion and butter. So yeah , he also like French food a great deal.

So maybe his palate is not so much picky as it is overtly sophisticated. He seems to enjoy dinner the most when I slave over the stove a minimum of two hours. Cookbooks open, fingers a mess, apron askew, hair in a bun.The more prep the better haha.

The bottom line. Action must be taken and an intense meal plan must be created.