The worst dinner ever!

It's hard to say if the meal I made last night was the absolute worst ever, but it's the only thing I've made in a long time that actually made me sick to look at it!

We had leftover pork tenderloin, which had been marinated in soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine, red pepper flakes, and canola oil. We also recently bought some spices from Penzy's, and one of the things I bought was arrowroot starch. It's supposed to be good to use instead of cornstarch. In the Penzy's catalog, there was a recipe for Hot and Sour soup, which calls for arrowroot starch for thickening.

Since we had leftover pork, I thought this could be the perfect time to make the soup. I bought the can of straw mushrooms, bamboo, and bean threads or cellophane noodles the recipe called for. I couldn't find Chinese black vinegar (even at World Harvest!), so I looked online for a substitution. Apparently, apple cider vinegar is ok to use instead.

So, last night, I started the soup. Everything went ok until I added the arrowroot. When mixed in water, it looked like the consistency of milk (not thicker). I added some right to the soup, thinking that would help (it said you could just add it directly). A few minutes later, I found all these globs...they were from the arrowroot, but they wouldn't mix in. I strained them out and tried to stir them together with a whisk, but they were stubborn little things! After a while, I gave up and just put them back in.

This next step is where things went totally awry-

The recipe says to add the package of bean thread/cellophane noodles. So, that's what I did. I was a little concerned about it after adding the first group, because they weren't really separating and were sort of this strange blob. I thought about stopping there, but I decided to just follow the recipe and add the rest. BIG MISTAKE! All of a sudden, I had a pot of slime. The broth had almost dissapeared, and all the pork, bamboo, and mushrooms were trapped inside. It was like something from Alien.

I could barely even eat it. We agreed the flavor was good, but it just made my stomach turn! It looked more like something that would come out of your nose when you have a bad cold than something appetizing to have for dinner. A total dissapointment!