Can't Cook, Won't Cook

On our local TV at the moment is a series called 30 minute meals. It involves a chef called Jamie Oliver showing us how to make "simple" dishes in 30 minutes to feed a family of four. Inspired by this idea I have been designing my own 30 minute meals for our house and I have to say it has all been going wonderfully. D rings me 40 minutes before he arrives and each night there is a piping hot meal on the table, sometimes with a dessert, there are always two side dishes and almost all washing up has also been done. Yes, I am a domestic goddess...or at least I was until tonight.
With everything going well I decided I would use the tv show's actual recipes rather than making up my own.
Tonight I was making:
"Jamie's Rogan josh curry with fluffy rice, carrot salad, poppadoms, banoffee pie and flatbread."

It. was. a. dis. as. ter.

Here is a list of just some of what went wrong...

• He quickly chops up the butter nut squash, (30sec) I struggled to get the label off mine as it left the "information" stuck on the side with glue which I could barely peel off and definitely wasn't eating (8mins)
• He puts the garlic in a press and squeezes them over the curry (5 secs). I squeeze and squeeze my garlic but it ain't going anywhere but garlic juice is now spraying me in the eye, after much hopping and screeching I eventually had to chop it up instead (5minutes)
• He chops the lemons in 4 seconds, this takes me the best part of ten minutes as they kept sliding everywhere and again squirting into my eyes, eventually I had to use scissors
• His workstation remained immaculate mine became a leaning tower of piza
• He had more pans and electrical outlets than I did
• My banoffee burnt while I was trying to rewind the video to see what his looked like
• I don't know about his flatbread but mine had burnt along with the banoffee - at no point did he say to check it
• My carrot salad tasted like soap
• Although i did pause the show and rewind a bit strangely it also lasted the 2 hours and 30 minutes of my cooking

The list goes on.

2 Hours and 35 Minutes later dinner was finally done.
The meal smelt delicious and D was making all the appropriate yummy noises...that is...until we tried it.
As far as flavours go....there wasn't one. I had followed him to the letter I had used every spice, lemon rind and garlic clove as instructed, and the result was....well...nothing. The whole meal tasted like warm wet veg.

Gee that made me pleased I'd spent the last THREE HOURS OF MY LIFE in that godforsaken kitchen mess with stuff EVERYWHERE! And now, not only did the meal not have any real wow factor but it also had left me with the entire contents of my kitchen to clean up.

D diligently scraped plates and helped stack dishes but it was all too much for me as I began proclaiming at the top of my lungs that Jamie Oliver was a b******d and obviously all his real tips are in his ruddy new book!
The only thing I have learnt from his show is that it is entirely possible to make a dessert and a side dish for a 30 minute meal...provided the dessert fits in a ramekin and the side dish is a pour out of the bag pre-prepared salad. Bravo Jamie you just invented a whole new way of conning people...
"Buy my new book it tell you how to open a bag and pour"

This has all ended with me making an offering to the cleaning faerie (of Jamie's severed head) and walking out of my kitchen with my eyes shut and my hands over my ears going "lalalala it's all clean"