Pitiful attempt at cooking

So now that I'm a wife and all, I figured it was high time I learned how to cook.  Unfortunately, it's not going so well. I mean, we don't starve or anything (particularly since Hubby is somewhat of a grill master) and I'm not totally inept. I can make the typical easy meals: pasta, tacos, Shake & Bake...I'm kind of drawing a blank on what else right now. (Huh. Maybe it's worse than I thought...) Back when I was single I went out a lot and ate lots of cereal and pizza so cooking wasn't exactly top of the list of priorities. Now I'm old and boring and stay home all the time so I really wish I knew how to cook and liked doing it.

I'm gonna go ahead and blame this one on my parents because their rule when I was little was "absolutely no kids allowed in the kitchen" when they were making dinner and they'd scream at us (instead of just at each other) whenever we came near.  I don't blame them since they were stressed out, broke and had to feed four kids they couldn't afford so the last thing they needed was to have us underfoot, but as a result I now have a strong aversion to anything even resembling cooking and absolutely zero skills.

Here's my most recent pitiful attempt at cooking: 
Today I tried to make pot roast in the crock pot. Mistake.  First, I decided I'd combine two recipes since I found both of them to be unnecessarily complicated (Because the best thing to do when you have no cooking skills is to go off the map, of course). Then I went grocery shopping and while there, made a split second decision to change it to french dip with au jus and roasted veggies on the side because that would be "yummier". (My decision-making ability is somewhat questionable.)  By the time I got home from the store it was already 1:30pm so I had to put the slow cooker on high instead of low since it was so late. That probably didn't do me any favors either.  The largest problem though, was that I apparently bought the wrong cut of meat.  They had barely anything to choose from and I assumed that since the package said "slow cooker roast" that it would work. It didn't.  It cooked all right but was just a solid rubbery mass of beef and not at all tender and pot roast-y.  I also forgot to put the veggies in the oven on time so the meat was done and the veg was still raw. To top it all off,  I forgot to buy the french baguette. I am like a chef!

Here's what I was originally picturing for dinner.

Here's what we pretty much ended up with.  Hunk o' meat + onions in broth. Delish.

In the end, we just threw the whole thing out and ate Eggos and veggie sausage. 

Me thinks I will not be attempting pot roast again for a while.  I am so lucky my wonderful hubby is a decent cook or else we would be eating cereal and pizza even more often than we already do.


I'm hungry.