Intro. . . or, what the heck is this blog?

Our ward had a chili cookoff last Sunday, and, if I may be permitted a moment of arrogance, our chili was pretty darn good (recipe to follow in next post). Basically, we took my roommate's standard chili recipe,added pineapple, and changed the meat from hamburger to a crock pot roast. This is not the first time we had done this, and I think last time we did this, it turned out better. Unfortunately, we had no record of what we did last time, so we had to start from scratch again.

We have a pretty (read: very, very) nerdy apartment (1 chemist, 2 engineers, and a computer scientist), and we frequently joke about applying scientific principles to mundane problems. So I half jokingly said that I was going to make a lab notebook for the things I cook. And then I realized that this was the perfect solution. I love to experiment, but I'm terrified of failure. Well, I've recently failed in my new graduate research lab, but these failures are just a part of doing science; the important thing is learning from your (repeated and frequent) failures. So I got to thinking, if I had a lab notebook for the things I cook, I could jot down ideas for next time to improve what I'm already doing, and record the colossal failures so I can remember what doesn't work.

So here goes. I actually did start a composition style notebook (about 10 minutes ago) to use as my notebook, but anybody who has ever lived with me will quickly come to the same conclusion I did: This notebook is going to last a whole 2 weeks before I misplace it. So, since it's pretty hard to misplace the internet, I decided to do a blog instead.

Plus, it allows others to learn from my mistakes as well. : p