The Slob BlogBecause slobs need love too!

If you happen to forget one or all of the ingredients in a dish, or you find some entirely new and creative way to ruin it, there are several recovery steps you can take.

1. Rename the dish immediately!  You can’t very well call something “Meringue Pie” if you’ve forgotten to buy eggs.  Call it “Lemon Pudding” instead or “Lemon Flan”.
2. Add sugar.  Almost everything tastes better when it is sweet, and sweet foods are easier to forgive for being bad.
3. Add toppings.  Toppings such as whipped cream, chives, cinnamon, sprinkles, sour cream, cheese crumbles etc. can help a sad and ugly dish look festive.  If you’ve really messed up, use enough toppings to cover the dish entirely.
4. Add rice.  It’s amazing how many foods taste great mixed with rice.  It’s probably because rice doesn’t really taste like anything.  Rice even shows up in deserts, so don’t worry.  If you are short on ingredients, just add rice, and you’ll turn a couple cups of mush into a whole bowlful of dinner.
5. Use creative presentation.  Sometimes recipes don’t yield as much as we expect them to.  This is generally due to an agregious measuring error.  The trick to dealing with this situation is going gourmet.  Spend a little extra time arranging the small portion of food on each guest’s plate.  Add a sprig of parsley.  Parsley makes everything look prettier.  If the guests are convinced the food in front of them is “gourmet” they will be happy to be sent home starving.  They would normally pay through the nose to starve like that, and you have given them the opportunity to do it for free.
6. Go spicy.  The spicier the food, the harder it is to tell what it tastes like.  No one will know that you made a mistake, and they’ll be too busy drinking water and fanning themselves to care.
7. Change the place of origin.  If you say the recipe you tried is from your aunt in Long Island, guests will be much more appalled by its disgusting flavor than if it comes from New Guinea, or Zimbabwe, or Bangladesh.  People expect foreign foods to taste strange and have questionable palatability.

Slobs are naturally forgetful people, and personally, I’m a fan of forgetting things.  Doing so rids me of the pesky inconvenience of having to remember them.  It also saves me time, money, and wrapping paper.  That said, for some reason, birthdays are one of those things people (especially those who like to have reasons to make you feel guilty) expect you to remember.  In the very likely case that you HAVE forgotten someone’s birthday, here are a few marginally effective tips to help you handle the situation.

Flattery: This is a timeless technique that instantly puts the person back on your side.  Say something like, “You’ve always had this timeless quality about you, and it’s hard for me to believe you ever have birthdays.”

Creativity: Once you forget the birthday, go ahead and wait another 3-6 months before you call the person.  Tell them you didn’t want your birthday wish for them to get lost in the crowd.  You were just trying to be original.

Invent a Reason: If you remember the birthday later that night, but you are afraid it is too late to call them, wait another few hours until the middle of the morning.  Call them at 3 or 4AM and say, “Oops, I am observing, live like another time zone day.  It’s 8:00 PM here.”  They’ll be sure to laugh right along with you.

Distraction: Call them and tell them something really horrible, like your dog was hit by a car and will now have to hop the rest of his life.  Cry very hard and get the birthday boy or girl to cry along with you.  When you have both cried your hearts out significantly say, “Just kidding, happy belated birthday.”  The birthday boy or girl will be so relieved that little Scruffy is okay that he or she wont have any energy left to be angry at you for forgetting a silly little birthday.