Potato Soup, Almost

I'm a firm believer that the quaint saying "Practice makes perfect." is complete hogwash.  Hear me out, practice usually helps, in copious amounts, as a matter of fact.  There are three things I practice or have practiced in the past.  Four if you include my job, but that doesn't count because it's my job and I have to practice it.  So, three then.  Writing, cycling, and cooking.  When I write and cycle on a regular basis, they improve.  Not that I become good at either, but there is definitely progress.

Cooking is a whole other story.  A sad, sad story.

No matter what I do, I can't seem to make anything edible.  Yesterday I took a potato soup mix, yes a mix, and put it in the crock pot.  I was careful to add the correct amount of water and even some suggested additions like broccoli and bacon.  My love for broccoli is such that I would morph all other vegetables into broccoli if I could.  Then I tossed in a lonely handful of black beans and plugged it all in.  It smelled delicious.  Finally I'd broken the cooking curse.

After it simmered and bubbled for the appropriate time, I went to pour some of it into a bowl.  (I have the baby crock pot for two, so I can lift out the middle and pour.)  It all came out in one gloppy lump.  It still smelled good, so I cleaned up the mess I'd made and sat down with a bowl of steaming soup.  I scooped the perfect bite; a bit of broccoli, a black bean, and a crumb of bacon.  I blew on it and sucked it off the spoon, ready to revel in my cooking prowess.  Surely they hand out crowns for such soup.

And then I tasted it.  I don't use this word lightly, but it was nefarious.  I couldn't bring myself to take another bite.  I prodded the whole glop of soup down the drain, popped open a can of Progresso and called it a night.

It doesn't seem to matter what I try cooking or how minutely anal I am in following the recipe.  It never works.  I am doomed to a life of canned soup, take and bake pizza and salad (because any idiot can chop stuff and put it in a bowl).  This idiot just seems to become an exponentially worse cook with each try.  Because all that practice is only making me excel in creating the most vile of creations, I've called a cease fire and am hereby retiring from the kitchen.  Everyone I know just breathed a well-earned sigh of relief.