Welcome to Rumbullster, Vermont. I'm Erica Heilman. If you've ever spent an entire day making what turned out to be an awful meal, welcome. Today's story is about shame and frustration and cooking. Here's writer Sarah Miller.

Chapter 1, the Decision.

A few weeks ago I made dinner.

A few weeks ago I made dinner.

I didn't make anything special. I made vegetables and rice and I

also made two small fig gullets. Cutting up the vegetables took hours and

pieces of them kept falling on the floor.

The garbage can had been put outside because of an ant problem.

So over the course of an hour, I probably walked about a mile and a half throwing out vegetable scraps.

It was very hot, and my pastry crust got sticky,

and my boyfriend helped me roll it out,

but then he had to run and take a call,

so I wrestled with it, and then I just put the thing in the oven,

and then realized I'd made the crust with unsalted butter

and forgotten to add salt.

So although the Gillette wasn't going to be ruined, it was not going to be the

galette of the century and the Gallet of the century is the only type of

galet I am interested in making and then I served the dinner and one of my guests

didn't really eat it and she said she didn't like fennel, which annoyed me.

When I finally went to bed after hours of cooking and cleaning up

and having achieved absolutely nothing,

having impressed no one, including myself,

...