Beware of Those Wearing Aprons and Sporting Wooden Spoons

It's funny how we can be so trusting sometimes, really. I know, I know, some of you might be of the mind that everyone is suspicious of everyone and everything these days, and you might also be correct, however, by the same token, all these usually suspicious people are extremely trusting of certain people or in certain situations. Most people completely trust things, like recipes, for instance.

I'm not sure if it's that a recipe, any recipe seems so comforting, nurturing. Recipes are passed down through generations, they are shared, the end result presented to family, friends, people who make you bake for school functions. Food is used to celebrate and to console. So it only stands to reason that we can trust people who cook and share their recipes and therefore, we throw our usual caution to the wind and accept without doubt that a recipe - any recipe - will come out good. Because why would someone kind and good share a bad recipe?

I'll tell you why. The really really bad people (sociopaths, Ted Bundy) are often well-liked individuals. And they (when they aren't busy murdering people) are often very nice to people. In fact, they usual fool their victims with their niceness. So I'm sorry to report, my friends that there are little old ladies or old men wearing aprons with little teapots on them busily planning their latest recipe doomed to fail miserably and they are planning to get this recipe out to a lot of people. And there's only one sure fire way to do this. Yes, you guessed it. The internet.

So the other day I was reading a certain favorite magazine of mine and there was a great article in there about soup, written by the author of a book on soups. At the end I was told that 5 of her soup recipes were on the magazine's website. I hurried there and not only did I find her recipes, but hundreds of others and - well - I strayed. I did not print out the recipes written by the author of the lovely soup story. I printed out another similar soup recipe and decided to try it.

I spent a good part of the afternoon chopping and chopping and chopping all kinds of stuff like real pumpkins - you know the kind with the tough gourdy shells - and I hand roasted the red peppers and the jalapeno peppers - two of them, and I diced and I stirred and I measured and I cleaned up the whole mess and I boiled and I simmered and I waited and then I tasted and then flames began to shoot out of my mouth.

Never ever did it occur to me that 2 jalapeno peppers was kind of a lot of hot pepper for a soup. I never considered that the author of that recipe whoever he/she/it is, from whereever she/he/it/lives who is probably at this moment laughing her evil ass off as she goes back to her job as the greeter at Walmart or something had planned this whole thing. She/he/it was probably thinking about all the people who would spend whole afternoons preparing this soup and it would smell wonderful and they'd be all proud of themselves and then they'd actually taste it and the smoke detector would go off. And he/she /it would probably be amused by this visualization for days, weeks, months - maybe even years. All this at my expense and that of my now tastebuds recovering from moderate to severe burns.

And who knows how many others have experienced a similar fate?

So what I'm trying to say my friends is that last night was pizza night. Thin crust, roasted garlic, veggies and pepperoni.