First, if this isn't the right place for this, please kindly let me know. I can't really blurt this to any friends and need someone to know my ridiculousness.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm doing this from my active main account because people that know me will not at all be surprised by this.

Background: I am a married stay at home mother to a three year old and a one year old. Being a parent is exhausting but I feel like I've got a decent grip on things, most of the time. I grew up in a household that did not cook. A normal dinner was an over baked, unseasoned chicken breast and an unwashed microwaved baked potato. No disrespect to people who like that, I just wanted to make better, tastier meals for my kids.

I've always wanted to be a good cook. My dream is to make a meal and have my husband say after taking his first bite, "Holy shit! This is delicious!!!" and do that eyes-rolling-into-back-of-head thing. In the over ten years we've been together, that has not happened. I try, I really do. I look up recipes and try new dishes and different things but somehow it always just turns out meh. Or I make a huge, laughable mistake and the food is terrible (did you know cumin and cinnamon come in similar looking containers? I didn't. Until I made homemade taco seasoning with cinnamon). My husband, who is amazing, almost always eats whatever I make, even the cinnamon tacos. I appreciate that he makes the effort to eat what I cook, I just want to wow him!

This leads to the TIFU. Our whole family has been fighting a cold since my oldest started school a few weeks ago. I thought some grilled cheese and tomato soup would be a great comfort dinner. I even found a recipe (that I've used before with some success) from America's Test Kitchen for perfect grilled cheese sandwiches. The recipe is more about technique than ingredients. The whole idea is to bake the sandwiches on a piping hot sheet pan. The first time I made this recipe, I didn't butter the bread enough and they burnt. I thought I had the solution this time; I would put a small pat of butter on the sheet pan right as the oven hit 450° and it would melt and coat the pan to give an extra layer of butter. Except, I waited too long and the sheet pan was ridiculously hot and the instant the butter hit the pan it started sizzling and popping onto the top burner in the oven. The smoke was thick and instant. I thought for sure I had set the oven fully on fire (again. I have actually done that before...) But it was just smoking really bad! Score! Except then the fire alarms started going off, startling both kids. Oh, and did I mention my husband works from home? So the smoke detectors are all going off, I'm trying to calm down the kids and make sure they know we're safe when hubs rushes up the stairs to make sure everyone was OK. The smoke detectors turned themselves off and he was able to go back to work. I thought, "hey! I can still salvage this dinner!" So I finish constructing the sandwiches and go to put them in the oven. Surely, the butter has burnt off by now! Nope! A huge billow of smoke comes out of the oven, once again causing the smoke detectors to go off, children to panic, and husband to rush back up the stairs.

We were able to eat the sandwiches, which were cooked to perfection, but had a lovely burnt butter flavor to them. Oh, and I burnt the tomato soup.

Tldr: I just want to be a good cook and make delicious meals for my family. However, I'm so terrible at cooking I nearly (well kind of) set the house aflame trying to cook a goddam grilled cheese sandwich.