Since these parts are scarce on the weekends, I feel it’s the perfect time for me to share my distaste for a certain oyster sauce I used last night in our meal.

I have had great success in replicating many meals from Pioneer Woman. Her most recent post was a recipe for Beef with Broccoli. It looked amazing and it compelled me to go to the store to get some of the ingredients I did not already own.

On my list was: oyster sauce, rice wine and peanut oil.

I found the oyster sauce, no problem. It got a bit tricky in the rice wine arena, though. I found myself in the vinegar section looking for “rice wine” vinegar. I never found any. So, I bought the rice vinegar hoping it was the same thing.

It wasn’t.

But, from what I have read, it wasn’t going to make or break my meal, so we will call that part a “push,” if you will. (rice wine is like sake. rice vinegar is what happens to wine when it goes bad. but I already has balsamic vinegar in the mix, so a little extra vinegar wasn’t going to change the taste, maybe just missing some sweetness here and there.)

The peanut oil? Was expensive, for oil’s sake, so I decided to just use a hot cooking oil I already had at home and be done with it.

While prepping dinner, I opened the jar of oyster sauce. Woah, did that NOT smell appetizing. I seriously, over the course of making dinner, began to feel nauseated. I kept thinking it would be ok by the time it was mixed with the other ingredients and, you know, COOKED.

So, I continued on, hoping for some sort of culinary miracle.

Right before serving my new found creation, hubs even said, “It smells great!” Cool, I thought. We just might make it through this one with flying colors.

Not so much.

After mentioning the beef was a tad chewy (but I attribute that more to the fact it was a sirloin and not my beef cooking abilities) we both looked at each other and mentioned something didn’t smell right. I told him of the oyster sauce issues I was having during the prep and hoped it would take care of itself on the plate.

I continued making my way through the meal, deciding it really wasn’t that bad as I cleared my plate. (maybe I held my nose?) Hubs was trying to find a movie to watch on On Demand, so he had stalled in his eating. I had already gotten up to pour some wine and looked back and told him he didn’t have to eat it if he didn’t want to. I wasn’t going to be offended.

Not two seconds after I said that, and before I could even get my glass down from the cabinets, I heard a clank noise. You know, the one you hear when someone is pushing their plate away when the utensil and the plate hit each other? Ya, that was the one.

I wasn’t too sad. I didn’t dig it much either. I was just happy we were able to down a few snickerdoodle blondies to make up for a disappointing meal.

Now, who’s going to do the dishes?

e