Never believe food bloggers are all successful in the kitchen…

I think I jinxed myself with that last post about the fantastic black beans. Since then, I’ve had a week of… not disasters, per se, but a string of foods that were eh at best.

Case #1: the blandest salsa ever

Based on this recipe from Epicurious, I added extra cilantro and some chili-garlic paste, and it was okay… for about 3 minutes. Most salsas gets better when the flavors can meld together for an hour or two or even longer, right? Ugh, not this one. Almost immediately, the cucumber started leeching out water and within 30 minutes, it was watered down to completely blandness. There’s a “this is what I get for following a recipe from Mariah Carey’s chef” joke to be made in here somewhere, but this stuff really isn’t even worth the effort.

Case #2: if there’s no basil, is it really pesto?

Basically pesto made with spinach instead of basil leaveszzzzzzz… whoa, hey, what happened? Oh, that’s right. I was talking about the most boring pesto ever. Without the spicy-anisey-clovey goodness that is basil, the pesto was a snore. A garlicky snore.

Case #3: coffee first THEN cooking

Friday afternoon, I was just completely knackered. While my husband went out to get me an iced coffee that would hopefully revive me for the afternoon, I decided to make a couscous salad, like the one pictured above… except my tired brain was so addled, I cooked at least twice as much couscous as I really needed, and in an effort to balance out all the other components, I ended up with EIGHT POUNDS OF SALAD. Seriously. The bowl weighed more than an average newborn. Even if it was the best salad ever (which, in case you didn’t pick up on the pattern by now, it assuredly was not), there was no way we would ever finish that much food.

So… yeah. Send some good cooking mojo my way, guys, because I could really use it.