We all have them. At least I think we do. I certainly have.

They stand out in the memory. And since Shirley and I married so young, our inexperience produced culinary disasters we could share and experience together.

Like that time in Riverside. We were young marrieds, both working for the Chapman School. That was a private school created and run by our friend Bill Chapman, or more formally, William Chapman, who taught classics at UCR, led the Poetry Group, and wrote poetry like T. S. Eliot.

He was a good friend, and his private school was all the rage. The upper crust rushed to enroll their children, and the UCR faculty considered it a must.

In addition to offering a curriculum that extended beyond conventional, where Shirley taught ballet and I taught English and served as advisor to the production of The Squires Masque in its first known performance in the Western Hemisphere, the school also served lunch.

Lunch was included in the price of enrollment and we, the staff, took turns providing it. When it came to our turn, Shirley decided to make dolmas.

She had grown up eating Greek, the family background and cultural heritage. She ate dolmas all her life, and introduced them to me. She introduced me to everything.

I loved dolmas because they’re food, and I always loved food as much as I could get, and I loved them because they came from her, and I loved her more than food.

Dolmas, or dolmades, or dolmathes, are little rolled grape leaves stuffed with rice and sometimes meat. They’re all over the Middle East in variations as one of the basic food groups.

I was kitchen help as Shirley prepared them at home in the morning of their lunch unveiling. I’d take each grape leaf, available in jars from Fresno, cut off the stem and pull out the vein that runs down the middle.

We stuffed them with rice, rolled and folded the edges, so they were like tiny green burritos and looked like little torpedoes or blunted cigars.

They lined the bottom of the big cooking pot and stacked up several stories high to provide enough for the school of hungry children and hungrier staff.

We covered them with water and took the pot to school, where we would cook and serve them hot and fresh, though they’re usually served cold, with an avgolemono sauce to spoon over.

The trouble was that Shirley had never made them before. She took them for granted. Her Mother had always been the one to make them, and Shirley hadn’t paid enough attention.

So we put the pot on the fire, and after a few minutes, the water started to boil. We decided that was enough to soften the leaves. You don’t want to overcook anything, especially if you’re making it for other people. So we turned off the fire and drained the pot.

I’m taking part of the responsibility for the result, even though I know almost nothing about cooking, certainly, in this instance, less than Shirley, who knew a lot, just not about dolmas, except to eat them. But I want to share the blame, because I wanted to share everything with her.

So we took the drained dolmas out of the pot, arranged them artfully on a platter, and put them out on the table. We each took one and tried it.

They were inedible! The rice was raw and hard, uncooked when stuffed. I now suspect that the rice should be cooked before it was stuffed. We didn’t know that. And they weren’t in the boiling water long enough for anything to get cooked. I thought Shirley would know, because she’d eaten them forever. But she’d never made them before, and instead of following a recipe, she used assumption.

We thought maybe if we put them back in the pot and boiled them for an hour, they might be fit to eat.

Chapman said, kindly, “Never mind. We’ll get a bucket of chicken.”

Then there was the time we had thanksgiving at our house. We were hosting the family, and Shirley’s parents came over. We were having turkey.

There are rules for turkey. If it’s frozen, there are ways to thaw it out. In the refridgerator for probably days, because, depending on the size, overnight may not be long enough.

You can try soaking it in water to speed the process, but it can keep the plastic flavor of the wrap unless you wash it well.
If it’s sold as “fresh,” sometimes it was pre-frozen and store-thawed and there may be ice crystals in the cavity.

You either stuff it directly, or cook the stuffing separately. You adjust the oven rack to accommodate the extra height. You tent the turkey with a loose aluminum foil, and after so many minutes or hours, after checking periodically, you remove the foil so the last stretch in the oven will give it that rich golden brown.

I think we had never cooked a turkey before. I don’t remember if it was fresh or frozen. I don’t remember if the stuffing was internal or separate.

I do remember that, after what should have been enough time, hours, frequent checks showed the turkey wasn’t done. People were hungry, sitting at the table, pawing the snacks. “Just a few more minutes.”

Checking again, wiggling the leg to see if it’s loose, and then, “Just a few minutes more.”

Then checking, turning up the heat so the oven would do its duty and cook the final stretch faster, then, “Almost ready.”

It was getting late, dark out, people wanted to go home.

In a last final effort over defeat, we brought the turkey out, sliced it, and declared it edible for anyone who was still there.

We decided privately to debrief the procedure before trying again.

I do like to eat turkey, especially the leg and thigh, and the breast if it’s not dry, with gravy. We did finally learn how to cook it, and have always enjoyed it ever since, on those special occasions.

I’ve written previously elsewhere about my saga with the five pies.

I was little, hungry, and on my own I picked not-yet-ripe peaches and made five pies which no one else would eat. It took me two days to finish them by myself.

Speaking of pies, I might just mention my somewhat more recent creation. It was not a disaster. In fact, it was a triumph. Universally acclaimed, and maybe a good way to end the account of a series of disasters on a positive note.

It was somewhere around holiday season, between Halloween and New Year’s. There were still pumpkins. We had the entrails from Halloween carving, and I never wasted food. We washed, dried, and roasted the seeds. We had pumpkin meat ready for something.

There was a persimmon tree next door with a branch that leaned over the fence into our yard, so we had hanging fruit within reach, ripe persimmons that were too expensive in the store, but here they were ready to pick, just falling off into our hands.

I decided to take advantage of nature’s bounty. I read cookbooks. I was a good reader. The books were instructive, but I was impatient with their limitations. I decided to invent my own pie.

I created a persimmon pumpkin sour cream pie that turned out to be one of the most delectable things I’ve ever eaten, here or in Europe. A real triumph. People still talk about it to this day.

People who never liked persimmons, tried a slice and said, “Can I have some more?”

Not all cooking ends in disaster.