JELLO

So most of you know I love to cook and I love to eat.  I have had many a friend comment to me on the strange things I make for our family to eat.  Now I don't think they are strange but I guess others do. 

Despite my love of cooking there are a few things that I think most of the world must have perfected but leave me dumbfounded.  Jello is only one.  Yes, I know, how hard can it be?  You add boiling water and cold water and waaa-la it's jello.  For some reason no matter what I seem to always have a nice grit at the bottom of my jello.  My mother didn't feed us a jello salad every Sunday growing up, really I don't think she ever fed us jello salad.  Maybe it's in the genes.  Mike's a purist and only will eat simple jello anyway no fancy add ins for him.

Tonight I decided to make burgers since my kids like burger king burgers.  I thought every time I shape them myself they shrink into little hockey pucks and are tasteless.  So this time I actually bought already shaped burgers in the ground beef section of the store.  Nothing was added to them but I thought maybe they'll work better.  I added some seasoning to each side and grilled them up.  They didn't shrink so much but they were pretty tasteless and I burned half of mine.  I believe BK is the only way to go for us.

To go along with our burgers I thought I'd use up some Tater Tots a friend left me when she moved.  Because I'm not educated in the way of tater tots I didn't get them into the oven before hand and read the package that said to pan fry them for 5-6 min.  as opposed to the 25 min. in the oven.  Let's just say that they weren't tater tots when I was done with them.  I didn't even use my non stick skillet so the crunch parts were all stuck to the bottom of the pan and the rest was , well, hash browns.  No one ate them and I don't blame them. 

So that's my confession of a few items I seem to lack the specific skill in preparing.  What to do with ground beef?  I just don't know.  On to cardamon chicken and shrimp saag and ginger glazed salmon oh and I made a really yummy chocolate pear upside down cake.  What's your particular cooking challenges?  Do you have any tips for me?