It’s April Fool’s Day, and I’ve been thinking about the best way to celebrate it. I ruled out making a “gross out” post, because I’m still trying to build an audience, and I’m not sure how loyal you guys are yet…

I thought about plating a “meal” made from all the parts of ingredients we typically throw away to highlight food waste…but I didn’t want to ruin the fun with a PSA…this time.

I settled on an ode to some of my ideas that never made it to the blog this year. Believe it or not, I don’t have a perfect record in the kitchen. Sometimes things are under-cooked, sometimes my ideas don’t taste, or look as good on the plate as I imagined, and the list goes on.

I intended to post this as a bonus if CM reached 500 followers this weekend (have YOU followed @craving_mad yet? What about your friend? Or your…mother?) so there’s a chance that this post will go live without reaching the milestone…

Well, let the self-deprecating humor commence.

In Fourth Place is some sad polenta with an even sadder chickpea stew on top. What went wrong? Well, I got distracted and messed up the polenta, and I couldn’t rescue the texture. I also ran out of tomatoes, and tried to make due with tomato paste– but that stuff has almost no flavor. Ironically, the combined flavors were pretty good–especially with a little feta on top…I just didn’t want to post it since I clearly couldn’t handle this one…

This Thai Basil Calamari Stir-Fry comes in third. This failure was also down to technique: I used regular flour instead of rice flower, so once it hit the wok with bell peppers it soaked up all the extra moisture and the coating fell apart. Basically, don’t do those two things, and it will turn out great…

In second place, we have this Baby Octopus Nam Tok that was…actually really good. This one didn’t make it onto the blog because it “disappeared”. Before I knew it, my “test” bites ended up going through all of the octopus before I could fully combine the ingredients and plate. Thus, the “salad” never truly existed. Don’t cook hungry, guys…

And finally we have first place– c’mon, you didn’t think I was going to mess up everything on this list, did you? I mean, just look at that burger– I bet I could even trick a Nigerian into taking a bite and they wouldn’t realize that there was no meat until it was too late. This one was also delicious, but it didn’t make it onto the blog for aesthetic reasons–first, it was too soon after the red lentil version, and the plating just didn’t cut it. You guys deserve better.

So there you go– you can officially believe everything else I say today–in fact, there a perfectly edible recipe posted here that will keep your Monday craving at bay for another week.