There is no try

So why am I quoting Master Yoda in a post about cooking? Perhaps because Yoda knows all and if he can live alone in a swamp for hundreds of years, he is likely a pretty darned good cook.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Hero boy Luke was afraid of the unknown. He was afraid of failure. Yoda basically told him to get off his ass and do it. That could be applied to cooking as well.

I have lost count of how many times someone has said “You’ve never made that before and you are serving it to guests? I could never do that. What if it fails?”

Are you that self conscious that you can’t let your friends see you make a mistake? The world doesn’t always go as planned and neither does dinner. That is why they invented take out. Besides, if your dinner is a flop and you order pizza, chances are that everyone will remember the evening more than they would have if dinner worked.

Experimentation is the only way we learn anything and cooking is no different. As you experiment with new flavours, you discover what works together and what doesn’t. Once you’ve been doing it for a while, you’ll begin to have a feel about how something will turn out, even before you make it. The best part is, you can eat your mistakes.

But the only way to make a mistake is to actually get in the kitchen and get cooking.

Go to it!