No, I’m not really sure what I was going for here.

Last weekend, Jason and I decided to clean the apartment. We like to test the limit of MCHT (Maximum Cat Hair Threshold), and we had recently been attaining new heights of achievement on that count. Given that, I wouldn’t really describe myself as being in a sunny mood as the cleaning got underway, but things steadily worsened as proof of my poor food blogger performance was discovered behind every dust bunny.

First, scattered about the living room, there was the leaf litter of forgotten blog post ideas. I had been so enthusiastic about making my own homemade limoncello when I first picked up this recipe card months ago. Ditto on that cauliflower pasta recipe that someone sent me, and the instructions for infusing honey with…actually, I don’t know what you infuse into honey, but I do know that I haven’t done it yet. Far be it from me to cast aspersions, but by the time I unearthed an article that Jason had saved on making one’s own complex spice blends, I had serious doubts about the likelihood of a successful follow-through, especially since he’s married to me.

On to the TV room, where I found menus for pizza and Thai takeout lurking among the sofa cushions and under the DVD player. I had been looking for these! Even so, they made me feel a little dismal. I suppose my affinity for takeout is no secret, but it’s a little depressing when a whole room of your home is decorated in couch potato chic. Besides, what kind of self-respecting food fan loses the best menus?

But the worst room by far was the kitchen. Even if one was able to overlook the lurid green jar in the corner, containing my sadly unsuccessful rock candy experiment, and the proof in the refrigerator that I am woefully inept at estimating the usefulness of allspice-flavored simple syrup, there would still be the stove to consider, cloaked in stains and difficult questions. What on earth was this yellow stuff, and how did I manage to spatter it over such a large surface area? How many years has this piece of uncooked macaroni been stuck in the back burner? Could anyone have really enjoyed eating this weird brown substance that has dried to enamel-hardness?

By the time we were done, the place was relatively cat-hair-free (except for that still attached to the cats), and I had managed to hide the evidence of my worst culinary failures. But by then, we were tired and starving. On our way out to get tacos, I slipped the unused recipes into the recycling bin.