Lessons learned so far this year

Since my loyal readers (how you two doing?) complained about me not posting enough, here you go.

I'm going be optimistic here: last night was a flawed ending to a flawed year, as opposed to a bad sign for the next. And what's more, it was a learning experience.

Here's what we learned yesterday, chum:

• While you may want to do something impressive for New Year's Eve dinner, an hour or two prior is not the best time to try some culinary cleverness you have never before attempted.


• Don't use quite so much oil.


• Don't thoroughly clean your kitchen and then start cooking.


• When you follow DIY instructions from a guy on television and he shows you how to use oil you already own, but suggests some other oil that would be better, go ahead and spring for the better stuff.


• The smoke alarm still works.


• While it's a good idea to take a 450°F cast-iron pan of smoking oil outside to forestall it catching on fire, and it's a good idea not to put it on the matting covering the stairs leading to your door (because, hey, won't that catch on fire, too?), the front sidewalk next the building's gutters is not the best place, especially if you're going to leave it there while you dash to the local 24-7 grocery store for cleaning supplies and air fresheners, because your brand new pan will not be there when you get back.


• If you start with good supplies, horrible mistakes are often still redeemable.


• Buying quality cookware when it's half price during a post-holiday sale is a good idea because someone's just going to steal the pan anyway.


• While spraying aerosol air freshener to cover a large area, do not simultaneously spray forward, face forward, and walk forward.


• Seriously, who the hell walks by the sidewalk on New Year's Eve and takes someone else's brand new cast iron pan full of bubbling oil?


• Preparing for something, even when preparation goes wrong, can still be far, far more worthwhile than the thing itself.


• Where the fsck is the damn pan?

I'm sure we all can agree these are universal life lessons that will serve us well in the year to come.