In college, I clearly remember my very first ‘failure’ in cooking like it was just yesterday. I’ll explain the ‘quotes’ on ‘failure’ later. It was right before Thanksgiving break, and my friends and I were making our own potluck Thanksgiving dinner right before break started. Well, I was in charge of the mashed potatoes. Simple, right? 

I was ready to blow everyone away with these fantastic, mashed red skinned potatoes with butter, salt and pepper, topped with crumbled bacon bits and chopped scallions. A creative play on the classic baked potato, right??? So much better than just regular mashed russet potatoes, right?????

Fail.

Nobody ate my potatoes. Because next to my gorgeous bowl of magnificence was a bowl of INSTANT MASHED POTATOES THAT CAME FROM A F****N BOX!!! Click on the link if you have no idea what I’m talking about. And be proud of yourself for never knowing what instant mashed potatoes from a box ever was. I’m ashamed such a thing came into existence. Who invented this stuff, AMERICANS?!? Next they’ll be inventing pizza in a box. OH WAIT, THEY DID!!!

So, why didn’t they eat my delicious mashed potatoey goodness? Reasons I overheard:

1. I don’t like green stuff (they’re called scallions)
2. I don’t like bacon (who doesn’t like bacon?!)
3. I like instant mashed potatoes more.

Ok, #1 and #2 I can tolerate (barely), but #3 just pisses me off. Who likes instant when you can have the real thing? Am I crazy or something? Because when I tried instant mashed potatoes I felt like I was choking down a gloppy mix of thickened flour + water which produced a slightly gritty texture in my throat causing me to choke. That’s all.

After taking my bowl of mashed potatoes home, I considered myself a failure. I didn’t understand how I could be so bad of a cook. I also couldn’t understand how I was the only one who preferred real potatoes. Was I living in some kind of bizzaro food world where people grew up never knowing what an actual home cooked meal was? The answer was yes.

Years later, I realized that I didn’t really fail at all. My record was still clean. Because my college friends were all cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Or as Chris says, “They’ve all gone fruit loops.”

But THIS, everyone, is an actual failure. Drink it alllllll in, cuz hopefully I won’t be doing it again.

I consider failure as something that is completely inedible.

First I’d like to say that I will not blame Chris. My dear husband picked up a bag of mini-chocolate chips because I wanted to make cupcakes with them. He didn’t realize that 90 degree weather + leaving chips in a car for 8 hours would melt the chips.

Who would’ve thought?

Chris: Um….Candy?

Candy: Yea?

Chris: Um…were you planning on making cupcakes with chocolate chips inside of them? Or chocolate flavored cupcakes?

Candy: Cupcakes with chocolate chips inside.

Chris: Oh. Ok. Well I can put the bag in the freezer and then smash it into little pieces with a hammer later.

Candy: huh?

So being me, I changed the cupcake recipe a bit, being adventurous. I couldn’t wait to show you guys my fantastic recipe of using a bag of melted chocolate in cupcake batter. It was gonna be the next best thing to sliced bread. Or real mashed potatoes.

Everything was going so well. The batter looked so good. It tasted good too.

They were puffing up so nicely in the oven, and the second I opened the oven door, they deflated like balloons.

These tasted like salty, vinegary, bitter I don’t know whats. No resemblance to a cupcake whatsoever. But I already took a lot of pictures of them, and figured I wouldn’t hide my disastrous FAIL. Instead, I’ll embrace it. Now that I know what the difference between a real failure and an instant boxed failure is.