For one of my Christmas gifts, Dan signed us up for a cooking class that I have been wanting to try at the local university. It's called Intuitive Cooking, and it's about learning to just take what you have and make a meal. I am woefully recipe bound, so I'm really looking forward to trying to think more creatively about cooking. But I think tonight, my adventurous side may have suffered a setback.

I decided to make a recipe called Lemongrass Chicken Stir Fry from a cookbook published by a Very Large Cookware Company with Pretty Stores, and I was kind of excited about it, even though the recipe called for at least three things I have never had any reason to purchase before: Fresh ginger, lemongrass, and Asian fish sauce. I was somewhat skeptical of my ability to obtain any of these items at the Wal-Mart down the street from our house, so when I went to another store with a more eclectic ethnic food section, I found the items and took it as a sign that this would be a good week to make this dish. Lemongrass, check. Asian Fish Sauce, check. No fresh ginger, but I have dry ginger and it will have to do.

The cooking was going very well, and the dish was even looking a lot like the nice picture in the book, which I assure you my cooking rarely does. Then I got to the last step, where the recipe calls for you to dump 2 tablespoons of Asian Fish Sauce onto your beautiful, lemony, gingery creation. Out of curiosity, I put my nose to the bottle of fish sauce to smell it before I added it to the stir fry. And then I almost fell down. Because it turns out that they market this product as "Asian fish sauce" because it wouldn't sell as well if they called it something more truthful, like "Essence of Rotting Fish -- In a Convenient Bottle!" I have never smelled anything like this in my life except when I have passed dumpsters sitting in the blazing heat. It was stunning.

I would like to say that based on my revulsion, I skipped the fish sauce altogether, but I couldn't bring myself to rebel against the recipe enough for that,. This is why I need to take a class. So I put the teensiest little bit into the stir fry, not enough to taste it, but enough that I could justify the fact that I probably paid four dollars for this stuff. I shouldn't have bothered, because there's no way I'll ever be using that again, unless I need to lure someone's housecat down from a tree top. (Note: I am sorry to anyone who loves and adores fish sauce. I love okra. And grits. I bet you hate both of those things, but maybe we can still be friends.)

As Dan and I were cleaning up the kitchen after our brush with Death via Olfactory Implosion, it occurred to me that if I keep trying new recipes, I'm sure this won't be the last time I buy some weird product only to be disgusted by it. So if you had to save me from one culinary misadventure you have personally experienced, what would it be? I should add that Dan will thank you if you share it and keep me from inflicting it upon him. He's a brave man, but he has his limits, so tomorrow I'm making beef stew, a traditional meal to make up for the ill-fated stir fry.

If he doesn't like that, I'm going to threaten him with fish sauce until he eats it anyway.