During my first semester in college, I decided to cook a pot of rice for dinner. I knew making rice required boiling rice on the stove with some water and waiting a while. But I’d never actually made it before.

Surely my clever 18-year-old self could figure it out! Isn’t rice the definitive easy recipe? I threw some rice into a pot with a two cups of water and turned on the heat.

The result: A burned sticky mess on the bottom of the pot. My mom bought me a food pass at the dorm cafeteria because she worried I’d never eat. (She was probably right.)

Lesson learned: If you’ve never made something before, look at a recipe or some instructions, even if you think you know how to make it. And watch the pot!

Yesterday, I had another chance to try cooking something else new: hard boiled eggs. I wanted to avoid the inedible disasters previously called hard boiled eggs.

Confession: I am 27 years old, and I had never successfully hard boiled eggs.

After a quick reference to Google, I found some great information at OChef.

I followed Julia Child: cool water, eggs covered, bring to a boil, then take it off the heat and let it sit for 17 minutes; when timer rings, set in ice bath. (I didn’t prick the egg first, but it was still ok.) The eggs were perfectly cooked! No nasty green around the yolks.

Where were all the hard boiled eggs while I was starving in college? This was very simple food to make and it made my Chinese chicken noodle salad very tasty.

I cooked another egg for my son’s meal today and he loved it, begging for more.

How do you make hard boiled eggs?

Note: This may give you a feeling for the level of cooking you may expect from this site. I hope to share my cooking mistakes and discoveries so we can learn together!

What’s one of your memorable cooking disasters?