Yesterday: Fail. Today: Fail. I wonder what tomorrow holds?

My cooking spree is starting to turn into a cooking fail.
I feel like the ultimate noob of cooking. It's discouraging, but on a more optimistic note it drives me to become better (or that's what I tell myself to make myself feel better.)

Fail Day 1
Yesterday I was the assigned snack person for my church. Determined not to spend my hard-earned money on petty supermarket snacks, I decided to bake my own snacks and share them. I made banana bread (it's vegan!) and snickerdoodles. The banana bread is really easy to make, but somehow it didn't taste as good as I remembered. It was moist, yes, but taste-wise it was a little bland. It might have been because I only added 1/4 cups of sugar for the sake of health, but that had never been an issue in the past. Gasp...I'm losing my touch!! The snickerdoodles were worse. Because I was out of butter, I substituted margarine. Bad news. My dough was an utter disaster. Rather than being stiff as it should have been, it was pasty and difficult to mold. In the end the textures of the cookies came out okay, but the taste was a little off. I was not happy. People said they enjoyed it, but to me, it was an utter fail. I'm losing my touch. Is it possible that I am getting worse at cooking the more I do it?
On a brighter note, that night I made a chicken pasta casserole-esque dish. It was pretty delicious. Or so I thought. My sister loves this stuff, but she wasn't home by the time I was done with it. I saved her a serving and she ate it the next day, only to report that it was bland and not my best work. My mom made me feel better by saying that the reheated pasta was not as good as the fresh one. I suppose she's right. My sister missed out.

Fail Day 2.
Today was my dad's birthday. I think he is 53 now. Anyway, after coming home from school at 2, where my day started at 5:30 am. I had tutoring from 4-6. I went to the store to buy groceries for my dad's birthday dinner. And cooked from 7-9-30. Wow. I was tired. I tried to make chicken duxelles with supreme sauce (a dish that was demonstrated to me in class the previous week) and tried to make some hodduk (the korean snack with the cinnamon sugar and peanut feeling). I misread the recipe for the hodduk. To make a long story short, after 2 hours I came to realize that my hodduk dough was crap and could not be utilized. Sadness. I labored over the chicken to redeem myself for the failure in making the hodduk for my dad. I made the filling for the chicken. Pretty damn good. I made the sauce, consistency was nice. Just when things start to look good, failure stabs me from behind, then takes a cheap shot by kicking me in the stomach while I'm down. I seasoned the sauce when it was the consistency of motor oil and left it on low heat to keep it warm. I guess warm is too high, my sauce continued to reduce and it was kind of salty. I put the chicken with the stuffing in the oven. My dad came home in a bad mood (it's a long story). Feeling the pressure, I took the chicken out of the oven. It looked kind of done from the outside, but my instinct said it should stay in the oven longer. Again, Long story short...I didn't follow my instincts and the chicken was OF COURSE undercooked. I mean, it tasted good in the long run, aside from the slightly salty sauce. However, I'm exhausted, I'm not feeling very proud of myself, and I suck.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.
Maybe.

Good thing I watched this video. It really made me feel better. NO joke. Watch it!