Not Your Mother's Blog

Onions, sausage, pasta, and greens in a simple chicken broth reduction sauce. What could go wrong, right?

Following a weekend of gourmet delights prepared by my Peruvian amante from Madrid, perhaps I was over-confident. After all, watching other people cook is practically like doing it yourself. No recipe, add a little of this, a little of that; what could be easier?

On reflection, I should have stopped at the start when my contact lens flew into the simmering pasta and sausage mixture, and I fished out the wilted plastic with a spoon. Or, at that moment when I realized I bought a potato based chicken broth and would have to use the concentrated broth cubes I had in the cupboard. But I refused to read the signs.

By the time I sat down at the table in my Pamplona, Spain flat, alone on Mother’s Day by choice, my children asleep in their beds nine hours behind me, I had an inkling this meal was not to turn out as planned.

Another epic culinary fail. Like parenting, cooking is a learned art, and like my parenting, my cooking is hit and miss.

I’m not one for iconic celebrations, and Mother’s Day is too much like painting a target on my torso and asking my family and friends to take aim. Instead, I think I’ll start a blog.

Welcome to mother fail, my attempt to write the instruction manual that didn’t come with the three kids I birthed 20, 17, and 12 years ago. Warning: This is not your mother’s blog.