Burned, thrice.

I consider myself a good cook. I know my way around the kitchen, around ingredients, around different preparations. It's a hobby that has gotten more and more serious in the past few years — maybe filling a void left by not playing pool lately. Friends and family enjoy what I cook, and I can usually take an eclectic set of ingredients from idea to execution handily. From time to time, though, there are reminders that I'm just an amateur. Tonight, I made a couple of such mistakes.

The plan was to prepare some sockeye filets we'd picked up TJ's with quinoa and a salad. No big deal, right. Easy. Prep the salmon and give it a quick sear on the stove before putting it under the broiler to get the top. Chop up some veggies for a little slaw to go on it. Add some veggies to the quinoa. Salad. Simple stuff.

The thing is the fish wasn't great. I knew that the moment I took it out of the package. Usually TJ's fish has been pretty consistent, but the last couple times the quality seems to have dropped off a little bit. This salmon was a little beaten up and might have seen a bit of freezer burn, but I didn't have a back-up plan. It was getting late, too. Time to pull some cumin and lemon to the rescue. If I couldn't grab a better piece of fish, maybe I could at least cover up the imperfections. I prepped it and moved on.

The garnish was going to be a bit of cucumber, some sungolds, parsley and a bit of pepper. For the pepper, I opted for a bright yellow hot pepper I'd picked up at the market. It seemed fairly innocuous, and I made sure to prep it correctly — slice open and remove the seeds with a quick wash, dice. I even cleaned my knife and hands afterward to prevent cross-contamination.

The quinoa had a good start on the stove. I salted it liberally and added diced some yellow squash and green pepper a friend had given L. I tossed it in the pan to cook with the grains. Seemed like a fine idea at the time.

Before pulling the salad together, I shoved the salmon under the broiler. I love cast iron for its versatility, and for the ability to get a perfect sear on almost anything. I pulled some greens from the bag and mixed them with the rest of the parsley and a red pepper that had landed on our counter this afternoon. Crumble some stilton over it, add a little balsamic, and we're all good, right?

It was just a couple minutes later that the burn started. My lips were the first hit, then my eyes. Then I realized I'd forgotten one very important detail — the cutting board. I'd washed everything but the cutting board. And now everything was covered in sweet, hot pepper. The salad was, if not ruined, at least the wrong set of flavors. The quinoa had an extra bite to it. My eyes were burning, and to add final insult to injury, I left the salmon under the broiler too long.

The last was the least of my problems since the salmon was already a bit of a flavor and texture fail. The mistake with the peppers bugs me though. It seems like the kind of mistake you shouldn't make if you consider yourself a serious-enough cook.

The truth is that life is filled with those moments, however: little lessons that teach you to always be vigilant, no matter how much you think you know.