What Egg Foo Yung Taught Me About Failure

This is not a picture of the egg foo yung I made. This is a picture of the shakshouka that I made once upon a time that I stared at while devouring a failed plate of egg foo yung in less than five minutes and wishing I had ordered takeout. The egg dish that I attempted last night never made it to the photo stage, because instead of looking like Chinese-omelet perfection, it was a strange brown lump of more textures than there should ever be in any dish at once. But alas, I am a stubborn dude, and I had gotten it into my head that my first attempt at egg foo yung should taste just as good as the kind that I used to eat at Golden China as a kid on most first and third weekends of the month with my biological father and my little brother who at the time only liked the chow mein. If smell is the sense that is most linked to memory, bad tastes are the sense that are most linked to disappointment.

I will say first and foremost, that I am not a graceful loser. It isn’t a very modest thing to admit, but after a lifetime of a lot of things I enjoy being pretty easy for me, I get bent out of shape immediately when I try something new and it doesn’t go my way. And after being a pretty good cook for as long as I can remember (thank you photographic memory and hours of FoodNetwork on the aforementioned weekends with dad), I am extra salty when a cooking endeavor doesn’t turn out the way I imagine it.

It could be my reluctance to follow recipes. Or it could be the fact that after nearly a decade, I don’t actually remember what egg foo yung tastes like, but the unfortunate thing that I created with my cast iron last night was definitely *not* what I had been hoping for. Whether or not I got what I was hoping for, though, I got what I needed, and apparently during a 10pm Saturday night dinner, what I needed was a reminder about the virtue of humility.

I wanted so badly to blame the recipe that I *didn’t* follow for this egg foo yung failure, but the better part of me found some sort of higher learning experience in my egg dish disaster (don’t judge me, it was late).

What I learned was this:

1. I need to go into experiences with the constant reminder that other people most likely know something that I don’t (and will often gladly share their knowledge with me!). In this case, the person who wrote the recipe probably knows what they are doing a little better than I do.
2. Following directions is not a weakness on my part. Sometimes it pays to follow the well-tested ways of doing things *before* I try to adapt and go off on my own path.
3. If at first you don’t succeed… Make egg foo yung again. It seems like the simplest lesson here, but when I don’t immediately master something, giving up often seems like a heady temptation. But I like the taste of egg foo yung, and if it merited my attention the first time, I sure as hell can try again.

So while I first set out to end my Saturday night with a big helping of egg foo yung, I ended up getting a well-deserved slice of humble pie. And sometimes that’s just the right ending to a Saturday.