exploding eggplant parmesan

I’ve been considering the subject of Failure.

I realized, long after I wrote about renaming this weblog “F,” that F was a grade that stood for Failure. F is not really part of my consciousness as a grade. I haven’t been in school for a long time. And I never got F’s. Correct that, only once that I remember, did I get an F. In a high school religion class taught by a psychotic priest who demanded that we memorize everything VERBATIM. One day I realized with horror that I’d forgotten we were having a test and failed to memorize everything, thus getting an F, even though I tried to use self-hypnosis to bring back the answers directly from my memory bank. Even at the time, I realized this situation was ridiculous and thought that Failure was pretty Funny.

I like the idea of Failure. I want to embrace it.

I just had a major kitchen failure. I wanted to prevent the top of my lovely eggplant parmesan from crisping too much, and I don’t like to use aluminum foil (environmentally insane). Creatively, I decided to place a slightly damp cookie sheet from the dish drainer over the casserole. It was a complicated maneuver, sliding the cookie sheet upside down into the dark oven, trying to avoid burning my arms, and adjusting it to settle over the pyrex pan. I pressed down on it slightly to make sure it was seated on all four sides.

Kaboom.

I have to get a digital camera. I made an indescribably spectacular mess that I’d really like to preserve for posterity.