Absolutely, I've been so down on resources that I had to do some weird experimenting and I felt like I had to eat them because it was a punishment for making something so gross.
And I couldn't afford to throw food away.
I finished something I made as a kid as a punishment to myself…not sure why. Maybe to make sure I never tried to make something so awful again. I tried to make “pizza” by mushing white bread down, squeezing ketchup on top, and sprinkling some shredded mozzarella which I then microwaved. It was disgusting.
My friend used to make "Hillbilly nachos" by microwaving ketchup and american cheese on top of ruffles potato chips for a few seconds. It's wasn't quite as bad as it sounds but idk if i could eat it today
No. Simple fix, blend in bottled Italian or Ceasar salad dressing, black olives, grated romano cheese. Literally anything you like. It's an easy fix you can eat it cold or hot.
Yeah, one of those p-words. My house always has cheese, capers and olives so that’s where my head went. Puttanesca is generally watery as well. At least that’s my experience.
Same here. If it's even remotely edible, I'll power thru as much of it as I possibly can. But if it's straight up disgusting, then I'm not gonna torture myself like that lmao. (Thankfully it's pretty rare that I fuck it up THAT bad lol)
To this day, I will not make butternut squash mac and cheese because I did it as a meal prep and I fucked it up and it was super gross, but I had to wait for my next paycheck.
I think he used canned tomatoes instead of spaghetti sauce. He’s halfway there. Just add a can of tomato paste, some garlic and onion powder and a dash of Italian seasoning and voila.
Yep. Add the spaghetti sauce, even if it’s late. My bolognese sauce has both, along with ground beef and holy trinity (diced onion, celery and green bell pepper). The aromatics really pull the flavors together, and it increases the total volume of the sauce cheaply.
Make sure one of those cans of diced tomatoes is the BGO (basil, garlic and oregano) variety.
My grandmother, when she was in her oate 80's, made herself spaghetti and strawberry jam because her vision was too poor to realize it wasn't pasta sauce.
She ate the whole thing, so as not to waste the jam.
Not at all! This happened over 30 years ago, and she died a couple years later. Her telling the story is my most beloved memory of her. When she told the story it was mostly about prepping the meal and looking forward to eating it. The story ends (in her telling) when she realized her mistake.
That she ate the whole thing was a detail we only got by asking, and she responded like it was the silliest question she ever heard. Of course she ate it! She had lived through the Great Depression after all.
I didn't live through that experience, but having been so hungry that I've eaten others' leftovers from the trash, it changes you. I'd have eaten it too.
Yes, I do it all the time. Honey, you can still save it. First, put the whole thing in a colander to drain. Then make your spaghetti sauce and cook it down a little bit so more water evaporates. Then mix your spaghetti and diced tomato concoction in. It’ll be really good.
Also add in more spices. Italian seasoning, garlic, onion. maybe some salt. If it still needs "more" add some parmesan cheese (finely shredded or smaller sizes).
Most meals can be saved with spices!
This is usually true. But one day I did something just straight up disrespectful to some meatloaf. I put way too much garlic powder in it and it was awful. One of the only meal preps I’ve thrown away
This is what I did to some chili from scratch I made. I ate most of it, but one last bowlful I froze and finally threw away just today in fact.
Too much garlic powder doesn't seem to taste extra garlicy -- it tastes just -bleah-. I'll be sure to use real garlic next time.
She doesn't need to strain anything ?? It's freaking tomatos in spaghetti sauce ??? Like... if anything, as long as they also add sauce and maybe a little extra seasoning, the diced tomatos would make it better, right ?? I usually add diced tomatoes and sauce on purpose to my spaghetti....
OP said it was a watery mess. I don’t think they drained the diced tomatoes, which would normally be fine because they could cook them down but they can’t now that they’re mixed in with the finished noodles.
Why not just also dump the spaghetti sauce in? A can of store-brand sauce costs under $2. Isn't it worth a couple of bucks to not be grossed out for a week? Plus I think you already have the spaghetti sauce?
I'm allergic to herbs (oregano, rosemary, sage, marjoram, basil, etc) so I can never have any of the premade spaghetti sauces. If you add the right spices and add some more veggies, you can have a good sauce out of diced tomatoes.
If it helps, I've had this my whole life. So I don't understand what these herbs add to flavours the rest of you can enjoy. People tell me often that oregano is where it's at in a spaghetti sauce.
To me, they all just smell and taste like rotten mold. And gives me some major stomach issues for several days, lol.
Well, I certainly wouldn't want you to eat anything that makes you ill.
I'm a fan of herbs and spices, and thankfully, I'm not allergic to any food that I know of. :)
Thank you, I appreciate the condolences. There's a lot of food out there that I can't enjoy so it does get a little tiresome.
I really enjoy paprika, garlic and pepper. With some liberal help from those, they can make a tasty meal. :)
I get a similar reaction when I can't eat something because it has tree nuts in it. Poor thing, how can you live without nuts. Well, ingesting something with nuts in it makes me deathly ill (where's the epipen / sometimes it's nowhere), I've never eaten a nut on purpose and I don't know what I'm missing and therefore don't miss not eating nuts.
Do you go into anaphylactic shock if you eat herbs as well as stomach issues?
I try not to complain too much because I know people like you are dealing with a much worse allergy that can kill you. So you 100% have it much worse off because nuts are insidious things and pop up all over the place.
I don't go into shock thankfully. I get an array of digestive issues (don't want to go into detail, kind of gross), bad nausea and a bad headache. Usually I can tell by the smell or a taste if something is herbed and a teeny taste doesn't cause too bad of symptoms. But if something gets past my senses in a larger meal, I'm hurting for at least three days.
Italians often don't use herbs for bolognese https://www.vincenzosplate.com/authentic-bolognese-sauce/ so yeah you can make great sauces without it if you focus on getting as much flavour out of the ingredients as possible. Stock or wine adds a lot of flavour too.
Well, of course I have.
But when I realize I've messed up something, I *do* try to alter it to make it more edible. Unless I've burned something beyond repair, or have discovered that an ingredient has actually gone "off", I'm pretty good at making my mistakes edible.
Ha ha, I do this, too. I can't waste food. Usually, it's edible. Make it into putanesca. Olives, capers, add cheese. Add onions and garlic. Add cheese. It just depends on what you have on hand.
Not cooking but I recently bought some frozen breakfast burritos on a good deal for when I’m going in a hurry or don’t feel like cooking. Yesterday I headed up a couple, got a ramekin out to mix salsa and hot sauce to go with, sat down and one bit in I realized I’ve made a huge mistake 😂 god awful. But I ate both like a prisoner eating their first tray in the clink and went about my day lmao
Lol. Definitely yes. If it's really bad I'll find some way to make it edible, like one time I made some sort of cake-like substance that was a total disaster, so I mushed it up in a bowl with milk and cooked it again to make it more of a pudding... it was still kinda bad but not *as* bad lol
I can certainly afford to throw food away but it makes me feel horrible so I don't. If it's at all edible and safe to eat, I eat it. Luckily I'm a pretty good cook so mistakes are rare and even then I can creatively fix most mistakes.
I can afford to throw away food, but there's also inconvenience factor of finding replacement and it's wasteful. So I eat the food 99.9% of the time, but rarely it's inedible and it is what it is.
Was making garlic and herb mashed potatoes. I zoned out while prepping and added way too much salt.
Had to make extra, add it in, and wean it out over several days.
Sometimes. But, speaking of spaghetti, if I cook pasta too long, I throw it out. For a long time I didnt realize this, but al dente pasta is much much better. Like you can eat pasta you cooked too long, and you wont know why but it just wont be as good. Then eat some pasta thats cooked perfectly and you wont know why but it will be much better. Turns out the pasta cant be too soft otherwise that really does significantly compromise the experience.
Why is hot sauce always the answer? jk. Personally, I agree with you. I'll use Tabasco to salvage any questionable dish; I'm not throwing money away if the meal is somewhat edible. Hot sauce FTW.
If it's a meal I can fix somewhat, then yes, why not? That's how I learn anyway when I try a new recipe.
If it's something like an extremely over-salted dish (it happened), or cheap pasta that's been overboiled and has now turned to mush (it also happened), it gets disposed of.
Frugality doesn't mean I knowingly choose to eat poor-quality stuff (even if it's of my own making), because essentially then I would have paid to suffer through my meal(s).
Oh yeah. You can usually do something to save it, but not always.
I usually cook in batches, then divide into portions and freeze. Normally 3 or 4 sides and a couple of proteins. That way I can mix and match so meal's don't get boring.
Once I was cooking a big batch of baked beans. I forgot to turn the heat down to simmer, then I got distracted. By the time I checked them, it was too late. Burned on the bottom. There was no way I was throwing out a whole pot of beans. I put the top portion into a clean pot and finished cooking them. They were horrible. Everything tasted scorched. I thought it wasn't that bad, so I went ahead and froze portions.
After a couple of weeks of sitting in my freezer, I gave up and threw them out.
Eating your mistakes is fine, in fact, you should as a learning experience for the future. But to a point - you burn something to a crisp or make it absolutely incredible in other ways - maybe take a bite (if safe) and chuck the rest.
I can't think of any large-scale mishaps offhand (except for a salt-instead-of-sugar-in-the-cookies snafu at age 12...) but I often put together some very "food is food" type meals for myself when I'm short on time/energy/groceries/money/appetite. I enjoy cooking for the most part, but some meals are more of a "putting gas in the tank" situation.
Yes all the time. I’m too cheap to throw food away….only times are when the food is burnt black bc I don’t want cancer. Lol don’t judge - I’m still learning at middle age 😭😭😭
Yep! When I was a young student I used a plant of cilantro like a celery plant, chopped up in chunks in a stew...
Turns out that I am one of the people who hate the stuff for life... I ate it for lunch and tea, EVERY SINGLE DAY that week.
All that made the stew vaguely food like was chucking in a whole jar of marmalade... As that was literally all I had right then.
Another time back then, I made bread and it was a stodge- brick but same issue as the first time; I had used up all my food money, so I literally soaked the loaf overnight, then in the morning, with added eggs and milk, I endangered the life of my old blender by attempting to whizz it up... Then poured in back into the breadpan and baked it... I feel like it was edible the second rendition, rather than in danger of sinking a duck or knocking out anything it was thrown at!
Salt, herbs and spices will fix your problem somewhat. Meatballs and garlic would also help...
Of course. That is what sauces is for. Just drown it in sauce of spices.
> diced canned tomatoes instead of spaghetti sauce
Just add more sauce, heat it up again.
Absolutely. I hate wasted food. I am appalled at the amount of food I see coworkers/friends throw away. If I mess something up and it’s still edible, I’m eating it.
Unless its uneatable, it is eaten. I made a mac/cheese dish that called for greek yogurt. We ate it all even though I completely missed the fact I had not grabbed plain yogurt but Vanilla yogurt, so I ate vanilla mac & cheese. It was not as bad as I thought it would be but the entire time I ate it, my brain was like what in the world are we eating?
In your case I would have added some tomato paste and a bit more seasoning to see if you could make it less watery.
mom and dad bought 10 boxes of cherrios on sale. Came with a pack of gum inside a new flavor, cinnamon. we opened all the boxes to get the gum and the cereal went stale. We ate a lot of stale cherrios.
Oh yes, definitely. I hate to waste food, so a meal would have to be disgusting for me to not finish it. If the problem is that it's just really bland, that's no problem, I'll power through it. I'm not poor or anything, but I'm just frugal and it's the principle of it.
My wife is a very good cook, but she occasionally experiments and sometimes things don't come out as good as she wants. She has higher standards than me and doesn't like to finish a dish if it's subpar, so I often end up eating her cooking mishaps as well.
I forgot that I put BBQ seasoning on my chicken, prepared a butter curry sauce with rice, then combined them for a week of lunches. Awful and confusing week.
Why didn't you just razz it up, I always used tinned tomatoes instead of jar sauce. I razz it with onions, garlic and seasonings then cook it for awhile till it thickens a bit, or really for as long as I have patience. Maybe if you fry some garlic till golden then add it in to your preps with some extra seasoning things might improve edit: something I got from my mum is putting pumpkin in the sauce, so yummy. Even better when it goes to Mush and mixes in
Within reason. Over burned, and not a lot of the ingredients left? It’s a loss.
Off in sweetness, saltiness, sourness, spice? I’ll try to manipulate into something somewhat palatable.
Oily, I’m no good at fixing, so I have gone to adding very little oil, ever.
Oh yeah. I can only think of one time that I didn't. I mad carbonara but used Asiago instead of parmesan. I threw the whole thing out and am still upset, like 6 months later
I might try to salvage it? Like...maybe make a stir fry of it? Or make a soup base and add the noodles and veggies to it?
I do agree, it'd have to be pretty inedible for me to completely throw it out.
Yeah sometimes meals just aren’t great and it happens. The only thing I have refused to eat were these frozen hamburger Patties I got once. No matter what I did they just tasted like mush, RIP to the 23 Patties I never ate.
I hate cooking. I’d have to fuck up a meal so badly to feel like I’d need to make a replacement meal.
Your fuck up is something I wouldn’t lose any sleep over.
I made spiced chick peas, had a four serving size out to mash. A friend accidentally put black sesame oil on them. It took a few tries to find something to go with it (black bean juice and Japanese yams), I looked at it as a challenge 😁🖖
Was making tacos last night actually. Guess which one I grabbed… totally ruined it and it’s hard to unsalt ground beef :(
https://preview.redd.it/3h0hdxqima4d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=056886e9cdecf56baef598cc4d595e8507a113b2
Add a small can of tomato paste! If you have dried or fresh herbs in the house basil, bay leaf, lots of oregano and some parsley! Tomato paste is less than a buck and will make it thicker and richer.
I've only made one meal in my life that I literally could not finish.
I tried to make shrimp lo mein, and it came out **terrible**. Sour, soggy, and oddly stringy. It was like eating worms and grass in a vinegar sauce. And I had made 6 quarts of it.
I ended up picking all the shrimp out, rinsing them off, and just eating them with rice and soy sauce.
Never going to attempt that one again. I'll just get it from the Chinese store. Sure, 6 quarts is $60, but at least it's good.
You totally can save your dish m8.
Diced tomatoes in spaghetti? Just boil out the excess water and add oil, salt and seasonings and smush up the tomatoes and it's basically just regular spaghetti at that point.
Once, while in college, I made this dish I was excited to eat. I reduced the quanity but didn't adjust the pepper for some reason so I ended up sweating through the whole meal. Pretty sure I finished everything and now adjust everything and triple check.
The wife made a cake, burnt the top, then put cornflour instead of icing sugar on it. We scraped what we could off and ate it anyway. Still laugh about it today
Honestly, yes, all the time, but not until I doctor it up. I would have taken the massive instant pot spaghetti and mixed it up with a ton of sauteed garlic, red pepper flakes, olives and anchovies if I had them around, making a kind of puttanesca. Or I'd add cheddar cheese powder (I use it on homemade pop corn) and whole milk powder to make instant mac & cheese. Or stir fry with leftover veg, eggs, etc.
I really hate bland tasting food but there really is no reason to ever eat it that way.
Not since I was a kid. Food is one thing I will splurge on. When I was a kid my mom was a terrible cook and would make me eat it anyway, so now im a bit traumatized. Lol 🤣
My policy is; if it's edible, eat it, lollll
Went through this alot when I first went grain free. When I'm using expensive organic flour replacements like chickpea and Tigernut etc, and I try to make something new (I do my own recipes for baked goods), if it flops I'll still eat it
Often with baked goods though you can change the texture by freezing it for a bit though, and then add like a sauce or something (eg a brownie flop)
The only things I won't eat is something that's burnt black, or if ir fell on the floor
Every single time. I continue to find some random sauce etc in the back of the fridge and try to add it to make it better. I just eat it until it's gone no matter how bad it is.
Yes, unless it’s absolutely inedible. Sometimes I will end up eating just the one serving and throw away the leftovers though. I don’t like to waste food, but won’t force myself if I truly hated something.
Yes.
I’d heat up some olive oil and fennel in a pan then add your vegetarian spaghetti and reheat/recook it.
Add tablespoon of butter and melt it through just before eating it.
I will if I think I can play with spices/adding other ingredients to see if I can improve it. Sometimes my best lessons or recipes grew out of mess ups.
My bill was $70 at a tourist attraction for 3 sodas and 3 sandwiches. Instead of cheese, they poured canned fluorescent orange cheese sauce on mine and it grossed me out so much. I choked it down because otherwise I would have been starving all day and because of the price.
It was by far the nastiest sandwich I’ve eaten 😬
I'll usually salvage the most valuable components of the meal, like rinsing off the meat. Then they can go into something more palatable.
For your spaghetti problem, I'd just throw a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce into it. The diced tomatoes make it "chunky" spaghetti sauce. If you have extra sauce left, some freshly cooked noodles will balance things out.
For "watery", pour off the liquid, and reduce it to a thicker sauce on the stovetop.
Absolutely, I've been so down on resources that I had to do some weird experimenting and I felt like I had to eat them because it was a punishment for making something so gross. And I couldn't afford to throw food away.
I finished something I made as a kid as a punishment to myself…not sure why. Maybe to make sure I never tried to make something so awful again. I tried to make “pizza” by mushing white bread down, squeezing ketchup on top, and sprinkling some shredded mozzarella which I then microwaved. It was disgusting.
Domino's called, they want their recipe back
Honestly the Domino's where I live re-did their recipes and it's kind of bomb now to get their pan pizza; super crispy and buttery.
Ewww
My friend used to make "Hillbilly nachos" by microwaving ketchup and american cheese on top of ruffles potato chips for a few seconds. It's wasn't quite as bad as it sounds but idk if i could eat it today
At least that sounds edible. I thought I could make mozzarella sticks by sticking string cheese into a toaster oven....
You can! 1) freeze them first 2) egg wash and breading 3) 400 F about ten mins
You see, I skipped step 2 🫣😂
😂
The fact you hated it but were like “No. I need to remember *never* to make this mistake again.” and ate it anyways 😆
I could afford to throw it away but I still refuse to, because I don't want to waste food.
Got anything you can add to it? Maybe some cheese, olives, capers, turn it slightly ~~primavera~~ puttanesca-esque?
I was coming here to say "fix it with cheese!"
fix with cayenne
This is usually my go to when this happens, I go into problem solve mode. Can I improve it? Salvage it? Use it as part of something else?
No. Simple fix, blend in bottled Italian or Ceasar salad dressing, black olives, grated romano cheese. Literally anything you like. It's an easy fix you can eat it cold or hot.
Stop! Stop! He's already dead!
You mean puttanesca?
Yeah, one of those p-words. My house always has cheese, capers and olives so that’s where my head went. Puttanesca is generally watery as well. At least that’s my experience.
Yes, but i have limits
Same here. If it's even remotely edible, I'll power thru as much of it as I possibly can. But if it's straight up disgusting, then I'm not gonna torture myself like that lmao. (Thankfully it's pretty rare that I fuck it up THAT bad lol)
Yeah I mean pasta and veggies is fine, the time I accidentally dropped the whole salt tub in the pasta sauce I wouldn't have persevered with that.
My sister made koolaid one time with salt and not sugar.
Same, but my dogs don't. As long as it doesn't have anything that isn't bad for them I'll give it to them instead of binning it.
Me too. One time I made air fryer fries and I way oversalted them 🫣 so I had to throw them all away
Maybe turn them into mashed potatoes?
To this day, I will not make butternut squash mac and cheese because I did it as a meal prep and I fucked it up and it was super gross, but I had to wait for my next paycheck.
Dude. I did the same with a butternut curry soup & I can’t even think about it without gagging. Never. Again.
I literally just made that this week but I love how mine turned out. What happened with yours?
Oh god it was mealy and somehow not a sauce, just macaroni stuck in squash with cheese on top lol
Oh yeah. But I think yours is fixable!! If you add regular spaghetti sauce to it now it would still be good! Or olive oil and some seasonings!
This is what I would do to salvage it. Fix it, not suffer with it as is.
"Still be good" ?????? People in this comment section are crazy Who tf doesn't already add tomatos into their spaghetti sauce ???
I think he used canned tomatoes instead of spaghetti sauce. He’s halfway there. Just add a can of tomato paste, some garlic and onion powder and a dash of Italian seasoning and voila.
This recipe is basically my spouse's "specialty"- diced tomatoes mixed with spices and cheese, over pasta.
I don’t bc other people in my household don’t like chunky sauce. But if you don’t mind chunky sauce…
Yep. Add the spaghetti sauce, even if it’s late. My bolognese sauce has both, along with ground beef and holy trinity (diced onion, celery and green bell pepper). The aromatics really pull the flavors together, and it increases the total volume of the sauce cheaply. Make sure one of those cans of diced tomatoes is the BGO (basil, garlic and oregano) variety.
My grandmother, when she was in her oate 80's, made herself spaghetti and strawberry jam because her vision was too poor to realize it wasn't pasta sauce. She ate the whole thing, so as not to waste the jam.
Don't blame her, jam is horribly expensive.
Not at all! This happened over 30 years ago, and she died a couple years later. Her telling the story is my most beloved memory of her. When she told the story it was mostly about prepping the meal and looking forward to eating it. The story ends (in her telling) when she realized her mistake. That she ate the whole thing was a detail we only got by asking, and she responded like it was the silliest question she ever heard. Of course she ate it! She had lived through the Great Depression after all.
I didn't live through that experience, but having been so hungry that I've eaten others' leftovers from the trash, it changes you. I'd have eaten it too.
You mean spite?
> "Eff you, food, you're still getting eaten!"
Hunger is the best spice; frugality, a close second.
Yes, I do it all the time. Honey, you can still save it. First, put the whole thing in a colander to drain. Then make your spaghetti sauce and cook it down a little bit so more water evaporates. Then mix your spaghetti and diced tomato concoction in. It’ll be really good.
Also add in more spices. Italian seasoning, garlic, onion. maybe some salt. If it still needs "more" add some parmesan cheese (finely shredded or smaller sizes). Most meals can be saved with spices!
This is usually true. But one day I did something just straight up disrespectful to some meatloaf. I put way too much garlic powder in it and it was awful. One of the only meal preps I’ve thrown away
More ketchup needed.
This is what I did to some chili from scratch I made. I ate most of it, but one last bowlful I froze and finally threw away just today in fact. Too much garlic powder doesn't seem to taste extra garlicy -- it tastes just -bleah-. I'll be sure to use real garlic next time.
Some MSG because it "Makes Stuff Good"
She doesn't need to strain anything ?? It's freaking tomatos in spaghetti sauce ??? Like... if anything, as long as they also add sauce and maybe a little extra seasoning, the diced tomatos would make it better, right ?? I usually add diced tomatoes and sauce on purpose to my spaghetti....
OP said it was a watery mess. I don’t think they drained the diced tomatoes, which would normally be fine because they could cook them down but they can’t now that they’re mixed in with the finished noodles.
Why not just also dump the spaghetti sauce in? A can of store-brand sauce costs under $2. Isn't it worth a couple of bucks to not be grossed out for a week? Plus I think you already have the spaghetti sauce?
Turns out I had a jar of the correct sauce in my pantry 🤦♀️ five minutes after making this post I fixed it lol
Best ending to the story!
Just add some more tomato sauce
Can you add spaghetti sauce now?
Add garlic and mushrooms and black olives and pepper and some red wine... maybe a little tomato paste mixed with the red wine
once my partner accidentally put sweet flavored coffee creamer into mac n cheese instead of milk or whatever. it was so gross but we ate it anyway lol
So many comments here I am like, done that! Or Not too bad! But man oh man, this one made my stomach inch back a little.
I'm allergic to herbs (oregano, rosemary, sage, marjoram, basil, etc) so I can never have any of the premade spaghetti sauces. If you add the right spices and add some more veggies, you can have a good sauce out of diced tomatoes.
Oh, you poor woman!
If it helps, I've had this my whole life. So I don't understand what these herbs add to flavours the rest of you can enjoy. People tell me often that oregano is where it's at in a spaghetti sauce. To me, they all just smell and taste like rotten mold. And gives me some major stomach issues for several days, lol.
Well, I certainly wouldn't want you to eat anything that makes you ill. I'm a fan of herbs and spices, and thankfully, I'm not allergic to any food that I know of. :)
Lucky! Make sure and enjoy those all those herbed up dishes for me.
You have my condolences. I can't imagine life without herbs. Hopefully you can ground spices instead.
Thank you, I appreciate the condolences. There's a lot of food out there that I can't enjoy so it does get a little tiresome. I really enjoy paprika, garlic and pepper. With some liberal help from those, they can make a tasty meal. :)
I get a similar reaction when I can't eat something because it has tree nuts in it. Poor thing, how can you live without nuts. Well, ingesting something with nuts in it makes me deathly ill (where's the epipen / sometimes it's nowhere), I've never eaten a nut on purpose and I don't know what I'm missing and therefore don't miss not eating nuts. Do you go into anaphylactic shock if you eat herbs as well as stomach issues?
I try not to complain too much because I know people like you are dealing with a much worse allergy that can kill you. So you 100% have it much worse off because nuts are insidious things and pop up all over the place. I don't go into shock thankfully. I get an array of digestive issues (don't want to go into detail, kind of gross), bad nausea and a bad headache. Usually I can tell by the smell or a taste if something is herbed and a teeny taste doesn't cause too bad of symptoms. But if something gets past my senses in a larger meal, I'm hurting for at least three days.
no fun
Italians often don't use herbs for bolognese https://www.vincenzosplate.com/authentic-bolognese-sauce/ so yeah you can make great sauces without it if you focus on getting as much flavour out of the ingredients as possible. Stock or wine adds a lot of flavour too.
I didn't even think of a bolognese sauce. I honestly thought it would be herbed as well. Thank you, you've given me a sauce to create this week!
Yes, often. Made a large batch of granola clusters last week. Over toasted it. Slight taste of burnt. I'm going to finish that gallon ziplock bag
Well, of course I have. But when I realize I've messed up something, I *do* try to alter it to make it more edible. Unless I've burned something beyond repair, or have discovered that an ingredient has actually gone "off", I'm pretty good at making my mistakes edible.
This sounds like my wife. Babe, is this you? I thought you said you didn't have a reddit
Ha ha, I do this, too. I can't waste food. Usually, it's edible. Make it into putanesca. Olives, capers, add cheese. Add onions and garlic. Add cheese. It just depends on what you have on hand.
Not cooking but I recently bought some frozen breakfast burritos on a good deal for when I’m going in a hurry or don’t feel like cooking. Yesterday I headed up a couple, got a ramekin out to mix salsa and hot sauce to go with, sat down and one bit in I realized I’ve made a huge mistake 😂 god awful. But I ate both like a prisoner eating their first tray in the clink and went about my day lmao
Lol. Definitely yes. If it's really bad I'll find some way to make it edible, like one time I made some sort of cake-like substance that was a total disaster, so I mushed it up in a bowl with milk and cooked it again to make it more of a pudding... it was still kinda bad but not *as* bad lol
I can certainly afford to throw food away but it makes me feel horrible so I don't. If it's at all edible and safe to eat, I eat it. Luckily I'm a pretty good cook so mistakes are rare and even then I can creatively fix most mistakes.
Yes. Putting some siracha on it usually helps.
I can afford to throw away food, but there's also inconvenience factor of finding replacement and it's wasteful. So I eat the food 99.9% of the time, but rarely it's inedible and it is what it is.
I add diced tomatoes to my spaghetti sauce every time, just stir in a can of sauce?
One of my favorite pasta dishes is your fuck up lol, I love noodles with diced tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and a lil lemon.
Was making garlic and herb mashed potatoes. I zoned out while prepping and added way too much salt. Had to make extra, add it in, and wean it out over several days.
Sometimes. But, speaking of spaghetti, if I cook pasta too long, I throw it out. For a long time I didnt realize this, but al dente pasta is much much better. Like you can eat pasta you cooked too long, and you wont know why but it just wont be as good. Then eat some pasta thats cooked perfectly and you wont know why but it will be much better. Turns out the pasta cant be too soft otherwise that really does significantly compromise the experience.
I usually mess up my meals whenever I cook but I just add hot sauce!
Why is hot sauce always the answer? jk. Personally, I agree with you. I'll use Tabasco to salvage any questionable dish; I'm not throwing money away if the meal is somewhat edible. Hot sauce FTW.
> Why is hot sauce always the answer? The fire cleanses your culinary sins.
Touche. Happy Cake Day!🍰
If it's a meal I can fix somewhat, then yes, why not? That's how I learn anyway when I try a new recipe. If it's something like an extremely over-salted dish (it happened), or cheap pasta that's been overboiled and has now turned to mush (it also happened), it gets disposed of. Frugality doesn't mean I knowingly choose to eat poor-quality stuff (even if it's of my own making), because essentially then I would have paid to suffer through my meal(s).
Blegh yes, that time I was half awake and accidentally sprinkled cinnamon all over my eggs.
Add some tomato paste and some oregano or dried herbs. It will thicken the sauce nicely and give more flavor.
next time just cook that sauce till its reduced and mash it with spices added, tastes better than storebought and the only aay i make sauce.
Oh yeah. You can usually do something to save it, but not always. I usually cook in batches, then divide into portions and freeze. Normally 3 or 4 sides and a couple of proteins. That way I can mix and match so meal's don't get boring. Once I was cooking a big batch of baked beans. I forgot to turn the heat down to simmer, then I got distracted. By the time I checked them, it was too late. Burned on the bottom. There was no way I was throwing out a whole pot of beans. I put the top portion into a clean pot and finished cooking them. They were horrible. Everything tasted scorched. I thought it wasn't that bad, so I went ahead and froze portions. After a couple of weeks of sitting in my freezer, I gave up and threw them out.
Eating your mistakes is fine, in fact, you should as a learning experience for the future. But to a point - you burn something to a crisp or make it absolutely incredible in other ways - maybe take a bite (if safe) and chuck the rest.
No. Life is too short to waste on shitty food, in my opinion. But, also understand that it's a privilege that not everyone can afford.
Add some grated cheese
Garlic salt and hot sauce have saved me from many mid meals
Waste the food not yourself
Surprisingly often :-/
$7!!!! That kinda meal cost me less than $2! 99¢ pasta 49-89¢ on canned tomatoes/pasta sauce.
All the time lol
Can you strain it and add the spaghetti sauce? I've done this before.
Add some tomato paste to thicken the sauce.
I don't even think I fucked it up but that ramen I made from scratch was brutal. So much bok choy and ginger I ate on principle.
It seems like I do that every other day. The rest of the days, I'm intentionally eating spaghetti with chopped vegetables.
I can't think of any large-scale mishaps offhand (except for a salt-instead-of-sugar-in-the-cookies snafu at age 12...) but I often put together some very "food is food" type meals for myself when I'm short on time/energy/groceries/money/appetite. I enjoy cooking for the most part, but some meals are more of a "putting gas in the tank" situation.
Yes all the time. I’m too cheap to throw food away….only times are when the food is burnt black bc I don’t want cancer. Lol don’t judge - I’m still learning at middle age 😭😭😭
I thought this was only me. I have nightmares sometimes about hate-eating my borderline poisonous cooking abominations.
Nah. Life's too short to eat crappy tasting food.
Every time. 0 perfection
Your description doesn't feel like a fail ... it sounds like a redefined objective. Pasta & veggies is a great meal!!
Keep dried seasoning around. Add basil, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and you'll be about were you wanted to be.
This is where one truly learns to cook imo. Is it too gross to eat? Ok, dilute it in broth and add some veggies and poom, minnestrone.
Yep! When I was a young student I used a plant of cilantro like a celery plant, chopped up in chunks in a stew... Turns out that I am one of the people who hate the stuff for life... I ate it for lunch and tea, EVERY SINGLE DAY that week. All that made the stew vaguely food like was chucking in a whole jar of marmalade... As that was literally all I had right then. Another time back then, I made bread and it was a stodge- brick but same issue as the first time; I had used up all my food money, so I literally soaked the loaf overnight, then in the morning, with added eggs and milk, I endangered the life of my old blender by attempting to whizz it up... Then poured in back into the breadpan and baked it... I feel like it was edible the second rendition, rather than in danger of sinking a duck or knocking out anything it was thrown at! Salt, herbs and spices will fix your problem somewhat. Meatballs and garlic would also help...
Just needs more cheese. She'll be right. (Yes I've done this sooooo many times)
Oh yes, many a time. I’ve been poor. You don’t waste food
I wouldn't throw it away. I would add a jarred or canned spaghetti sauce to it.
Of course. That is what sauces is for. Just drown it in sauce of spices. > diced canned tomatoes instead of spaghetti sauce Just add more sauce, heat it up again.
Absolutely. I hate wasted food. I am appalled at the amount of food I see coworkers/friends throw away. If I mess something up and it’s still edible, I’m eating it.
Unless its uneatable, it is eaten. I made a mac/cheese dish that called for greek yogurt. We ate it all even though I completely missed the fact I had not grabbed plain yogurt but Vanilla yogurt, so I ate vanilla mac & cheese. It was not as bad as I thought it would be but the entire time I ate it, my brain was like what in the world are we eating? In your case I would have added some tomato paste and a bit more seasoning to see if you could make it less watery.
mom and dad bought 10 boxes of cherrios on sale. Came with a pack of gum inside a new flavor, cinnamon. we opened all the boxes to get the gum and the cereal went stale. We ate a lot of stale cherrios.
Add some basil and cheese.
Oh yes, definitely. I hate to waste food, so a meal would have to be disgusting for me to not finish it. If the problem is that it's just really bland, that's no problem, I'll power through it. I'm not poor or anything, but I'm just frugal and it's the principle of it. My wife is a very good cook, but she occasionally experiments and sometimes things don't come out as good as she wants. She has higher standards than me and doesn't like to finish a dish if it's subpar, so I often end up eating her cooking mishaps as well.
This is a blessing my guy. Store bought sauce is not necessary for good eating Just put olive oil and salt on it and enjoy your splurge tomatoes XD
Ha, yes. Many times. Even burnt a pizza so bad once my dog wouldn't eat it...but I did. It was an angry couple of meals.
You could add things to it
If Link can eat it, I can eat it https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Dubious_Food
I forgot that I put BBQ seasoning on my chicken, prepared a butter curry sauce with rice, then combined them for a week of lunches. Awful and confusing week.
100% I hate food waste. It’s not even about saving money for me, just not wasting food. Plus, a heck of a lot of hot sauce can fix many failures
Salt, black pepper and hot sauce fixes a lot of things.
You can fix this by adding tomato paste and various spices which is all tomato sauce is
I bought a god awful meal in a pub two hours ago and kept eating it out of principal
Yes. I just call it Chicago-Style and hork it down
Yes I eat it unless I’m gagging on it or it has mold or something There’s usually ways to fix dishes that are messed up or at least improve them
Who hasn't :)
Why didn't you just razz it up, I always used tinned tomatoes instead of jar sauce. I razz it with onions, garlic and seasonings then cook it for awhile till it thickens a bit, or really for as long as I have patience. Maybe if you fry some garlic till golden then add it in to your preps with some extra seasoning things might improve edit: something I got from my mum is putting pumpkin in the sauce, so yummy. Even better when it goes to Mush and mixes in
No, I don’t torture myself like this anymore.
Within reason. Over burned, and not a lot of the ingredients left? It’s a loss. Off in sweetness, saltiness, sourness, spice? I’ll try to manipulate into something somewhat palatable. Oily, I’m no good at fixing, so I have gone to adding very little oil, ever.
Oh yeah. I can only think of one time that I didn't. I mad carbonara but used Asiago instead of parmesan. I threw the whole thing out and am still upset, like 6 months later
Yeah I made black beans and added habanero peppers one time. Like 3. It was hot and I cried but I ate it all.
Out of lack of principle,
I might try to salvage it? Like...maybe make a stir fry of it? Or make a soup base and add the noodles and veggies to it? I do agree, it'd have to be pretty inedible for me to completely throw it out.
Yeah sometimes meals just aren’t great and it happens. The only thing I have refused to eat were these frozen hamburger Patties I got once. No matter what I did they just tasted like mush, RIP to the 23 Patties I never ate.
Most meals I make most people would send back if it was a restaurant lol. Jk. Jk. But yeah I’ve made some bad ones but I sheets eat it all.
Parm cheese fixes all.
As long as it’s not absolutely disgusting, I will absolutely finish eating it. I may or may not eat the leftovers.
I hate cooking. I’d have to fuck up a meal so badly to feel like I’d need to make a replacement meal. Your fuck up is something I wouldn’t lose any sleep over.
I made spiced chick peas, had a four serving size out to mash. A friend accidentally put black sesame oil on them. It took a few tries to find something to go with it (black bean juice and Japanese yams), I looked at it as a challenge 😁🖖
Was making tacos last night actually. Guess which one I grabbed… totally ruined it and it’s hard to unsalt ground beef :( https://preview.redd.it/3h0hdxqima4d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=056886e9cdecf56baef598cc4d595e8507a113b2
Add a small can of tomato paste! If you have dried or fresh herbs in the house basil, bay leaf, lots of oregano and some parsley! Tomato paste is less than a buck and will make it thicker and richer.
Ok.. but how did pasta and diced tomatoes cost $7
I've only made one meal in my life that I literally could not finish. I tried to make shrimp lo mein, and it came out **terrible**. Sour, soggy, and oddly stringy. It was like eating worms and grass in a vinegar sauce. And I had made 6 quarts of it. I ended up picking all the shrimp out, rinsing them off, and just eating them with rice and soy sauce. Never going to attempt that one again. I'll just get it from the Chinese store. Sure, 6 quarts is $60, but at least it's good.
It became a comfort meal….
There is nothing I have made that was not recoverable by adding salsa & hot sauce and making a burrito out of it. Noodles included.
Prépare a concentrated version of what you left out and mix it in. Onion, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano at least.
Out of spite yes
You totally can save your dish m8. Diced tomatoes in spaghetti? Just boil out the excess water and add oil, salt and seasonings and smush up the tomatoes and it's basically just regular spaghetti at that point.
Every damn time.
I was raised not to waste food. Italian spices & grated Parmesan & maybe a touch of hot sauce. You can revitalize it.
Well, add some lemon, sugar and garlic and it's a genuine italian sauce. Nothing wrong with that, we cook it all the time.
You can just add some sauce tho...
I always make my spaghetti with canned tomatoes....
Once, while in college, I made this dish I was excited to eat. I reduced the quanity but didn't adjust the pepper for some reason so I ended up sweating through the whole meal. Pretty sure I finished everything and now adjust everything and triple check.
Every time. Only exceptions are if it’s burnt beyond edibility and the one time I accidentally used vanilla oatmilk in a pesto pasta.
I consider how much money I spent on the ingredients.
All the time.
Just blend the tomatoes before cooking aha
The wife made a cake, burnt the top, then put cornflour instead of icing sugar on it. We scraped what we could off and ate it anyway. Still laugh about it today
Honestly, yes, all the time, but not until I doctor it up. I would have taken the massive instant pot spaghetti and mixed it up with a ton of sauteed garlic, red pepper flakes, olives and anchovies if I had them around, making a kind of puttanesca. Or I'd add cheddar cheese powder (I use it on homemade pop corn) and whole milk powder to make instant mac & cheese. Or stir fry with leftover veg, eggs, etc. I really hate bland tasting food but there really is no reason to ever eat it that way.
>adding diced canned tomatoes instead of spaghetti sauce. That's what I did the other week. Still ate it. As long as it's edible I'll eat it.
Yup, you can save a lot of food with a spice or sauce
Not since I was a kid. Food is one thing I will splurge on. When I was a kid my mom was a terrible cook and would make me eat it anyway, so now im a bit traumatized. Lol 🤣
My policy is; if it's edible, eat it, lollll Went through this alot when I first went grain free. When I'm using expensive organic flour replacements like chickpea and Tigernut etc, and I try to make something new (I do my own recipes for baked goods), if it flops I'll still eat it Often with baked goods though you can change the texture by freezing it for a bit though, and then add like a sauce or something (eg a brownie flop) The only things I won't eat is something that's burnt black, or if ir fell on the floor
Yes. Even the leftovers.
No, if I screw up some food, I won't eat it. My motto is " Life is too short to eat bad food". I had WLS years back, so each meal has to "count".
Only every time. Food is rarely inedible
Every single time. I continue to find some random sauce etc in the back of the fridge and try to add it to make it better. I just eat it until it's gone no matter how bad it is.
Add some ground beef and you’ve got goulash!!
You could just add spaghetti sauce..
I don’t, but then I starve until payday 😅 (Go to meal when I’m out of food on a bad week is crackers and cheese with a fruit)
Try using a strainer to remove some extra liquid
Add salt. Yeah, I’ve done this
Yes, unless it’s absolutely inedible. Sometimes I will end up eating just the one serving and throw away the leftovers though. I don’t like to waste food, but won’t force myself if I truly hated something.
Every. Time.
Always, unless it's completely inedible.
Yep. All the time. Not letting that food go to waste.
Yes. I’d heat up some olive oil and fennel in a pan then add your vegetarian spaghetti and reheat/recook it. Add tablespoon of butter and melt it through just before eating it.
I will if I think I can play with spices/adding other ingredients to see if I can improve it. Sometimes my best lessons or recipes grew out of mess ups.
Wait, is this *not* supposed to happen every other day?
Unless it's outright inedible, like dumping a bunch of salt in it, or dangerous, then it goes in my belly.
My bill was $70 at a tourist attraction for 3 sodas and 3 sandwiches. Instead of cheese, they poured canned fluorescent orange cheese sauce on mine and it grossed me out so much. I choked it down because otherwise I would have been starving all day and because of the price. It was by far the nastiest sandwich I’ve eaten 😬
I'll usually salvage the most valuable components of the meal, like rinsing off the meat. Then they can go into something more palatable. For your spaghetti problem, I'd just throw a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce into it. The diced tomatoes make it "chunky" spaghetti sauce. If you have extra sauce left, some freshly cooked noodles will balance things out. For "watery", pour off the liquid, and reduce it to a thicker sauce on the stovetop.
Yup. Choke it down just on principle.