dinner disaster

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I can think of two times in my life when I've cooked up a dinner that was awful. So awful they have been almost inedible. Last week, I had one of those nights.
The first time was a couple years ago when I was trying to stretch our food as far as possible before making a trip to the market. It sounds like a good way to save money, but it was probably mostly out of laziness. The pantry and fridge were nearly empty, but we did have spaghetti pasta, ricotta cheese, lemon and a few other things. Trying to be adventurous and forgo a recipe, I put together a dinner that will always be remembered in our household. I cooked up some pasta, mixed it with a little ricotta cheese, lemon juice and zest, salt and pepper and garlic and some type of vegetable we had, I think it was zucchini. Sounded like a good use of ingredients at the time. But I don't know if it was the ricotta cheese or lack of salt, but it was flavorless, bland and boring.
It's pretty hard to find a dish that Alex won't eat and this one was the first. The second happened to be this week during another night when I should have headed to the market instead of searched through the fridge and freezer for inspiration.
Alex found some cheese raviolis in the freezer and the first clue that this wouldn't be a great meal is that I couldn't remember when I had bought them. But I had half an hour to eat before heading back to work, so we took our chances. We had some frozen shrimp so we sauteed those up with butter, garlic and a little cream. We mixed them up with the cooked raviolis but again were left with a disappointing dinner. Some of the raviolis were soggy while others were chewy. The shrimp needed lacked flavor. And the sauce was bland. It was definitely another dinner disaster.
Even though I love to cook, these two times are just reminders that there's so much more to learn in the kitchen. I think that sometimes the kitchen screw ups are the most memorable, especially if you can laugh about it and order a pizza instead. I can follow a recipe and cook up a delicious dinner by tweaking it a little, but I'm still trying to master the art of building my own recipes. I can only hope that will improve with time!