My poor mother tried so hard, but yeah, combining foods into an interesting dish is not an easy thing. It didn’t help that she has never understood the joke about a wife replacing every ingredient in someone’s favorite dish and then complaining they didn’t enjoy it.

Now as a burgeoning cook, I, too, wish I could sometimes just have the skill to properly spice dishes and mix vegetables into actual flavor instead of another weird combo that is palatable but definitely not ‘good.’