Haven't made a lot of mistakes lately, but when I was about 14, my mom asked me to fry some frozen, breaded shrimp for dinner. I didn't know the difference between corn syrup and oil. I fried them in corn syrup. You can imagine the mess.

After years of only making frozen pizzas, I'm now cooking. I can make shrimp dejonge, crusted filets and I just made chicken marsala. Problem is, I still can't make a grilled cheese without burning a side, my pancakes turn out like Twinkies (there's an unintentional cream filling) and I can't even warm up Ramen without starting a fire.

Here's a simple recipe for the best pork ribs you'll ever have. Boil the ribs in root beer for about two hours. Pull them out of the pot when the meat starts to slide off the bone. Paint the ribs with the root beer-laced barbecue sauce and then char them on the grill.

As a younger gent, i started a pot of water boiling....with no water. Upon noticing the black char floating in the air from the bottom of the pan, I quickly removed it from the heat and placed it directly on the counter which promptly bubbled up from the immense heat. Upon seeing the new counter mountain that I made I moved it (the pan) to the sink and ran very cold water over said pan, warping it. So, pan ruined, counter ruined and I had no ramen soup.

Sorry, but I think some of you people need to stick with take-out and forget about learning to cook.

Ouch. I was about 14 or so when that happened. I'm no master chef now, but I can cook quite well. It's a skill that takes some practice, but something everyone should be able to to do...to some extent at least.

Everyone should know how to cook. And the biggest part of cooking is reading directions, carefully. Oh sure, the TV chefs may not have a recipe book out in front of them, but the rest of us do much better with instructions. Like the burned pancakes and grilled cheese... you probably have the heat higher than any instructions would tell you. High heat does not always equal "cooks faster", it means the outside cooks faster, but the middle may not have time to cook. Lower the burner temp and everything gets a chance to cook evenly.

And even mistakes can sometimes lead to success and surprises. The other day I was making a tomato salad and I added too much red wine vinegar. Ended up adding some honey and a little dijon to help balance it out, and it was probably the best tomato salad I've ever made.

My favorite was the first time my daughter (about 10 at the time) made brownies from scratch. When they came out of the oven, they looked and smelled perfect, but they tasted a "little" off. She realized that instead of 1/2 teaspoon of salt, she used a half cup.

When my sister was younger, she made chocolate chip cookies. instead of a teaspoon of baking soda, she used a cup. They were they puffiest cookies I've ever seen.

I think Brian should win a prize - I'm very impressed. I was inspired to come up with a top ten list on my blog. I'll share one of them with you, in case it might help some poor fool like me in the future . . . if you put a tightly fitting lid on a hot pan and let it cool long enough, the lid will never come off – ever.

you aren't learning if you're not making mistakes