Stuff I Can't Eat - Fail-Loaf

Today, I failed at cooking an edible dinner for the first time. My biggest mistake was ruining my plans for making tasty gluten-free ziti in turkey marinara sauce by not checking to see if the leftover marinara sauce was still good before I added the meat (thus ruining over a pound of good, seasoned ground turkey.) I decided that, though it was a depressing loss, I could still make something edible. It's hard to go wrong with parmesan, garlic, herbs, and olive oil or butter.

My second failure, I think, lays partly in the hands of Heartland Ingredients and their "Quick Cook Premium Ziti". The first time I had their pasta, it was wonderful. The second, it had an awful aftertaste that still got to me even after I'd added sauce. This time, the pasta itself was of a flavor somewhere between the two previous tries. I'd used half the package before and been roughly satisfied. This time, I tried their "New & Improved" preparation instructions. When I checked the pasta after the suggested 3-4 minutes, it was still inedibly tough. Just a minute later, though, and it had become limp and breakable. Still, I thought, it wasn't that bad. Except in the time it took me to drain it, the pasta had gotten cold, or lukewarm at best.

I put it on low heat and added my sauce ingredients, but I'd apparently underestimated how quickly it truly lost heat. To top it off, the pasta wasn't even tough enough to hold structural integrity against the horrible assault of oil and light stirring. To make a long and depressing story short, it turned into a horrible, shrunken, fractured, congealed mess in the bottom of the pan which I could only dub "Fail-Loaf." In case you doubt me, I've included a few images:

Mmmmm.... Tasty. My boyfriend was able to stomach it without too much trouble (that he would admit), but then again, he works in a parasitology lab. A strong stomach is his part of his job.

At least my first failure was a spectacular one! (And a good thing my city has a Pier 49 Pizza place that offers gluten-free crusts, in case I do it again!)