My Cooking Pearls of Wisdom

I've decided to impart the greatest cooking lessons I've learned, and they are pure gold nuggets of knowledge. They boil down (pun intended) to three basic rules:

1. You can never stick to the recipe entirely. It's not physically possible. Seriously.
You can measure exactly, heat the oven correctly, and be on the brink of perfection:

And something will go wrong.

 

It's part of the laws of the universe.

2.  How you feel when your cooking will come through in the meal.
There is great truth here. If you cook angry, it will taste different, and possibly even look different.

3. Always, always, always use the minimum amount of tools that have to be hand washed.
This is my third and greatest lesson. Only superwoman could finish baking/boiling/broiling/stir frying food into existence and have the energy to wash dishes afterwards. For me cooking is emotionally, mentally, and physically tasking, and I usually finish looking something like this:

At my house, if you cook just for yourself, you clean too. So in order to maximize laziness I've gotten creative.
I use the 1/4 cup for all measurements, so I only have one measuring cup to wash. I try and use dishwasher washable bowls for mixing, and use the smallest easiest-to-clean pans. A few hours ago I made a pie and I only have two items to wash: a knife and the pan.

So there are my three truths of cooking I've learned through the creation of many delectable masterpieces and exponentially more failures.