The Great Onion Disaster of 2011

Hi friends! I am not sure how to start this blog post because I am not bringing to you a successful recipe or some great dish I made last night. But, oh man do I have a story to tell you!! Last night Nick and I went on a walk and I was not in the mood to cook a hearty dinner at 7:30 in the evening. But we did want something. I got to thinking that making Tomato and Basil Bruschetta would be a lite meal for us and would satisfy our hunger but not weigh us down so late in the evening. If things had worked out, I’m sure I would have been right.

I’ve blogged more than one hundred times and each time I have been pretty successful, if not very successful in all that I have presented to you. While not everything has been perfect, I’ve learned to adjust ingredients to suit our tastes better and it has been great for us. I mean, I’ve been teaching myself how to cook for about seven months and have successfully never botched anything terribly [or even close to terribly!]. I like being a perfectionist. I pride myself on getting things right or working until I think they are right. Last night when I was making the Bruschetta I thought I was on the road to a perfect appetizer/meal. However, what I created was far from perfect.

Now pretentious people will judge me and secretly marvel in my mistakes. Good people will laugh with me and tell me nice try. I have laughed because of this. In fact, I laughed right out of my Nail Salon/Spa this morning having told my personal “beautifier” what happened to me last night. Yep, she is MY beautifier: she makes me beautiful because she is beautiful!! We had a great laugh about my botched meal.

Many of you may ask why is this girl blogging about a meal gone bad? Well, why not? I mean, none of us are perfect and I think it is silly to hide our mistakes from our great audiences. Not one of us has never made a mistake and I do not think keeping our mistakes on the down-low is very honest of us. So here I am, telling all of you out there to read this blog very, very carefully and NEVER make the same mistake I did. If you do, go outside or your eyes will continue to water for hours.

Bruschetta seemed easy enough to make. Here are the ingredients:

• 1 loaf French bread
• ¼ of 1 red onion, peeled
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 teaspoon basil leaves
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 4 to 6 roma tomatoes, quartered and seeded
• ½ cup balsamic vinaigrette
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 425*
• Drizzle some balsamic vinaigrette on each slice of bread
• Bake for 5 minutes until golden brown and crunchy
• Place onion, garlic, basil, parsley and olive oil in blender

• Pulse 5 to 7 times and then push mixture down, away from the walls of the processing bowl
• Add tomatoes and repulse for another 5 to 7 bursts until the tomatoes are chopped up into small chunks
• Spoon mixture onto baked bread slices and sprinkle with salt, pepper and remaining balsamic vinaigrette
• Eat

Bruschetta before tasting

So, you may be wondering where it all went terribly wrong. I mean, this is not rocket science and it is probably one of the easiest recipes I have attempted in my blogging adventure. Well, biting into the first piece of Bruschetta I knew instantly what was happening in my mouth. Are you ready? TOO -  MUCH  - ONION! Oh yes, girls and boys, instead of putting ¼ of the onion into the blender, funny me thought it would be good to experiment with adding an entire onion to the blender. Did I do this on purpose? Heck no!!

Bruschetta after tasting

I don’t know what I was reading when I put an entire onion in the blender, but it happened and we had to live with oniony mouths for the rest of the night. I swear now I still taste a hint of onion. Gross!!! While successfully making Bruschetta is still on my ever-expanding to-do list, it has been pushed down a couple of notches. I will not soon forget about this disaster!!

The great thing about this fiasco was that I laughed at myself and thought it would be a great story to tell because everybody can relate. I’ve learned to laugh at myself more in the kitchen than I have in my entire life! Mistakes do not always have to be awful lessons; they can be laughable lessons that turn into great stories! So – if anybody is reading this, thank you for reading my story!!!

Until Next Time,

Happy Lesson Learning!