After finishing the diverse leafy green salad with multiple mix-ins I’d fixed, I was busily programming and forgot that I’d left some homemade meat sauce simmering on the stove. When I got up from my desk to prepare the macaroni main dish I thought I’d heated and left cooling, I found the tomato sauce boiled almost dry, mostly blackened halfway through. Being one game for experimentation and not inclined to throwing away something I’d put a fair amount of work into, I added some water to the pan and stirred the resulting mixture – how bad could it be? Well, it was pretty bad, but not completely horrible: Surely there must be a way to recover this! From the suggestions that were offered, I decided to stir in some butter, honey and cumin powder. A couple of adjustments later I had an interesting kind of barbequed flavor with a hint of Indian cuisine that was actually pretty good: What had started out as likely to be a plain (somewhat boring) bowl of elbows and tomato sauce, and could easily have been discarded as a disaster, turned into a rather new and unique eating adventure.

Recipes are great, but knowing how to cook and not being afraid to try something new can definitely lead to some unexpected palate discoveries!