Cooking Fail

I guess it wasn't a total failure, as the soup was salvageable, but this was my downfall:

I got suckered at the new Farmer's Market last weekend into getting something weird out of sheer curiosity. It's bitter melon, and I soaked it in ice water and de-seeded it and put it in a nice soup and picked a piece out to taste and almost spit it out. So I guess the ice water did nothing to decrease the bitterness and I am just a wuss. I picked every single slice out of that soup and now I am going to go enjoy it.

I finally made stock today out of the turkey carcass in my freezer, so it has turkey, carrots, noodles, bok choy and ginger. And I think that will be just fine. We have been having a really mild July all of a sudden so I figure I need to make soup while I can get away with it. It was this or lentil soup, which I will post a recipe for soon because now it is my favorite new soup.

Also, Tuesday's apricot jam came out a little bit too liquid, but overall it was nice. Now I just need to get a lot more apricots. I decreased the sugar so I could taste the fruit more, so it didn't set quite as much. But it's tasty, and will stay on a PB&J, so I don't care. Although apparently I shouldn't go late to Farmer's Market and get the smushy ones for cheap, because they have less pectin and my jam will be even runnier. It's nice to be worrying about small stuff for a while instead of big stuff, let me tell you.

And the bitter melon failure? Cost all of $0.45. So I think I'll be able to cope.