TIFU by cooking a fancy dinner to impress my friends and failing miserably.

Today, I decided to host a dinner party and cook a three-course meal for my friends. I wanted to show off my cooking skills, so I spent all day researching recipes, picking out ingredients, and getting everything ready. I was feeling pretty confident that I was going to nail it.

I started with the appetizer—bruschetta. How hard could it be, right? I found a recipe that looked super simple, but I must’ve misread it because I ended up adding WAY too much garlic. It was like I had made a garlic paste with a bit of tomato thrown in. I tasted it, and my mouth was on fire. I tried to salvage it by adding more tomatoes, but it just made everything worse. So, I had to throw out the first batch and start over. That should’ve been my first red flag, but I pushed on.

Next up was the main course: roast chicken with roasted vegetables and homemade gravy. I thought this would be easy, but I didn’t account for the fact that my oven is tiny and couldn’t fit everything at once. I ended up trying to cook the chicken while making the vegetables on the stove. In the middle of juggling both, I forgot about the veggies and they ended up completely burnt. I had to toss them and quickly boil some potatoes to mash as a side instead.

Finally, I moved on to dessert: chocolate mousse. I’d made it before, so I thought I had it down. But, of course, I miscalculated the chill time. When I took it out, it was more like a thick pudding than a mousse. I tried to fix it by stirring in whipped cream, but it just turned into a gooey mess. By the time I was ready to serve it, it looked like something you'd find at the bottom of a trash can rather than something you'd eat.

When my friends showed up, I served everything with a smile, hoping they wouldn’t notice how bad it all turned out. But as soon as one of them took a bite of the chicken, they paused and said, “Uh, it’s really good, but what’s with the potatoes? They’re like cement!” I tried to laugh it off, but it was clear everything was a disaster. The mousse was the worst—one of my friends took a spoonful and asked, “What is this supposed to be?” I panicked and said, “It’s… a deconstructed mousse. Yeah, totally intentional.”

Everyone was polite, but I could tell they were struggling to pretend it was good. After dinner, they all left early, and I was left alone in the kitchen with a mountain of dirty dishes and half-eaten food. I ended up ordering a pizza for myself because I couldn’t bring myself to eat what I had made.

Later, one of my friends texted me, “Hey, the dinner was fun, but next time, let’s just order takeout, yeah?” And that’s when I realized I should’ve stuck to something simple like pasta or ordering pizza instead of trying to impress everyone with a fancy meal.

TL;DR: Cooked a fancy dinner for my friends, ended up with burnt vegetables, dry chicken, and sad mousse. Everyone pretended it was good, but I learned my lesson: never cook fancy again.