"Julia Saw cooking as an ongoing learning experience -- if you fumbled here and there, if your pears were lousy, she'd definitely let you know, but it would not cost you your job or diminish your competence in her eyes as long as you were willing to learn."

Nancy Verde Barr, "Backstage with Julia: My Years with Julia Child" (Wiley, 2007), pages 29-30

"Maturity is recognizing the same mistake when you make it again."

1980s folk saying at Xerox PARC

There's a tendency when you're keeping a journal, food or otherwise, to record only your triumphs, but really it's more important to describe your failures and try to analyze what went wrong.

Every year at the beginning of summer I make the same mistake. I stick to my winter and fall and spring habits and cook food too long. Braising, my favorite technique, is not well suited to summertime flavors. I recently ruined a perfectly good tomato sauce for noodles by cooking it as I would in the wintertime: olive oil and bacon, low heat, closed pan, lengthy cooking. That makes a wonderful winter sauce, dark and scrumptious. But braising summer tomatoes is a sin. The summer version of the sauce should be barely kissed with heat, only one degree removed from rawness.

Similarly, I ruined a cold carrot soup by roasting the carrots before I pureed them. Roasted carrots from the grill, OK. Cold carrot soup, OK. But the two together? No no no. I should have steamed or better yet microwaved the carrots till they were just the slightest bit tender, with no rich, caramelized, BOLD BOLD winter BOLD BOLD edge.

Since this same mistake occurs at the beginning of summer year in and year out, what can I do to nip it in the bud? How to halt it without ruining a meal or two?