Sidebar: Because I live in a 1BR apt my parents seem to think that I have room for every kitchen appliance on the planet. While I would love nothing more than to be the Mocha version of Sandra Lee, with a matching set of appliance & a kitchen-aid mixer to match every outfit I own, I can’t do that in a 1BR apt. Fact: My parents live in the “As Seen on TV” house. This means that when my mother purchased the ENTIRE Magic Bullet system, she didn’t buy one … she bought three. And I was the lucky recipient of one of those huge boxes of parts. I’ll admit because I have a freaking BLENDER {yes, I’m yelling}, I’ve never found a need for the Magic Bullet. Then my blender broke during my morning smoothie marathon and here I was mid-experiment and wanted to blend up some stuff…namely – tomato paste.

Raise your hand if you know what tomato paste is? {crickets … crickets} Yeah, we all should know that it is very thick & concentrated and can’t be made from two lousy Roma tomatoes that some silly girl sticks in her Magic Bullet. Allow me to just say that the result of this was a watery, pink mixture that looked more like toddler puke than a sofrito foundation. But I used it anyway.

At that point I threw in some Worcestershire sauce & a 1/2 packet of Taco Seasoning I found. I added quite a bit of Adobo with Cumin and little water and let that puppy simmer for a little over 30 minutes on low heat. I will gladly admit that at this point I was scared.

Complete Disaster #2
I love corn. Corn is the easiest thing to cook. How could you possibly mess this up? Add chipotle … that’s how. I thought I was a fan of chipotle peppers {this one might have been in adobo or something}. I chopped them up and threw them into the canned corn that was simmering on the stove. At that moment, I realized that the wretched smell radiating from my kitchen was in fact those chipotle peppers I just ruined my corn with. Threw in some extra cilantro, a little salt, pepper, and butter to save my precious corn. This did not help. Because I vow to eat everything I cook {or at least taste}, I knew I was going to have to eat that corn, so for the moment, I just ignored the fact that it smelled like Novocaine laced truck tires and moved along to my next trial. The cilantro-lime yogurt sauce.

We Can Save This #3
I love cilantro. Did I already say this? So, perhaps in my adoration for the stuff I may or may not have stuffed the entire bunch I purchased into my Magic Bullet {as you can see above} in preparation to make a lovely cilantro-tinged yogurt sauce to use in place of my sour cream. I minced the 2 garlic gloves, added some nonfat plain yogurt, lime juice, salt and pepper. You want to know what happens when you have WAY too much cilantro and not enough yogurt and possibly a little too much lime juice? You get a very GREEN, very runny liquid that doesn’t resemble sour cream at all. What in the world have I just done? Oh well, must try it.

So here I was in my apartment looking at what could turn out to be a total disaster. I browned my corn tortillas in a dry skillet, added my meat/veggies, topped it with a little Fat Free Cheddar, and then poured on that GREEN liquid that just came out of my magic bullet. Reluctantly, I added that foul smelling corn to my plate and began to pray. “Lord, bless the hands that prepared this food – my hands – because I quite possibly might have just created the worst meal ever. Amen.”

And then…I bit into one of those fajitas.

And that garbage was FREAKING FANTASTIC. It tasted SO good. Perhaps it was the slightly sweet taste from the Caribbean Jerk marinade, quickly followed by a warming sensation from the cumin & taco seasoning, which both added just the right kick. And then that GREEN junk, that lovely awesome green stuff, was so divine and so tasty. {Hey, maybe it could be a really good salad dressing}. My joy was slightly over zealous as I reached over for a forkful of that corn. That stuff was gross. It tasted like it should make my mouth numb from eating it. In other words, it’s not fit for human consumption.

Rather than continue my meal, I took a quick break to go throw out the entire pot of that corn. And then proceeded to smash my fajitas…all four of them.

You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you just break even.