Really bad cooking fiasco

Let me start by giving you a history of my cooking skills...

When Dan and I married... I had none.

I made kraft mac n cheese, Prego spaghetti sauce w/spaghetti and a can of mushrooms thrown in to make it "fancy", and anything frozen or out of a box like Hamburger Helper or frozen lasagne. The other nights (about 3-4) we ate down the street at our favorite local restaurant "Thirstbusters" in Las Vegas, NV. We were newlyweds with no kids, and I couldn't cook that was for sure. Dan is actually a good cook, he doesn't use recipes he just throws it all together and it comes out great. He makes a really mean stir fry-yum! I have to use a recipe, and I follow it to the "T".

Well, when I became pregnant, I suddenly got maternal I guess you could call it, and I was determined that I would be cooking good healthy meals for our family and we would eat at the TABLE (up until this point we ate in front of the tv on the couch). So I put together a book (used a big photo album with sticky pages) to organize by category all the recipes I had been cutting out of magazines over the years that "looked" good, but I had never actually made them. The book is actually pretty cool. I even jot notes in it, like what day I made it and if its good or what changes I would make next time, or if a different/similar recipe is easy and better to make, etc.
So, I started cooking.

Nothing fancy, mind you. Everything was simple and with as few ingredients as possible. In fact one of the ladies I worked with was selling a cookbook that her bowling league had made as a fundraiser. I bought one and have made MANY things out of it. Its super easy and lots of cans/boxes/brand names are included so I don't have to make anything from true "scratch".
I did pretty good at this for several years. I would plan out my menus sometimes 1-3 weeks at a time, buy all my ingredients, jot down what meal I was making each night on my calendar and away I'd go on my dinner extravaganza. I was pretty excited about cooking during this time because that "maternal nature" I guess hadn't worn off yet from my pregnancy and I wanted to make good food. Problem was, I was so excited, I THOUGHT it was good food. But in reality, it wasn't all that great. After several years of this, Dan began to get tired of it and finally started to tell me his true feelings about the meals. Which of course didn't make me happy "what?! you don't like it?! I 've served that for years and you always say its good!" (guess he was just being nice. Problem is, if you say its good, I'll make it again! ha ha)

Well, about a year or so ago, I got real tired of cooking because the truth is I'm not that great of a cook , and it gets pretty discouraging when the stuff you are making doesn't taste good and no one likes it. So we eat out a lot-every chance I get.

However, yesterday, I had planned to make what I thought would be one of our "old favorites". Chicken, rice, and cambell's soup (crm of broccoli) sauce. Problem was, I didn't have enough chicken breasts for the whole family. I saw the chicken thighs in the freezer Dan had told me to buy this summer because he said he preferred them to breasts (AFTER dinner he explained that he only likes thighs and legs on the grill, not cooked any other way--lesson learned.)
So anyway, I put in two of those too, figuring that will be enough meat for everyone. I assumed he would want the thighs but when they got set on the table I could tell he really didn't want them and he only ate them because I didn't cook enough of the white meat to go around.
Well, here is where the bad part happened. But first let me tell you, I baked the thighs first, then put them in the skillet to finish them up. They appeared to be done and I thought this was going to be a really good meal. WRONG!

Dan puts a thigh on his plate,sticks his fork in it, and the darkest, reddest, thickest blood you have ever seen shoots out all over his hand, table, and his rice! UGH! This is not good. I can't believe they are not cooked! Needless to say they got thrown out and I was very bummed that I didn't provide a good dinner for my husband. I wanted him to eat all the breasts and I was just going to eat the sides (truth is eating no meat does not bother me at all, I would rather everyone else get enough food than for me to eat meat). But of course, he doesn't want me to not eat meat, so he won't eat it all either, making me eat the last piece. We are both a bit stubborn so we have a tense bummed out dinner that was supposed to be really good.

This however does explain why normally it is a well-known fact in my house (even T dreads it) that I always OVER cook meat because I don't want anything raw! ("mom, don't make chicken its too dry!") However, lately I've been getting a little better about not overcooking things so we've actually had nice moist chicken about , oh, 5 times in our life. Well, anyway, in my attempt to make that chicken not over-cooked, I totally UNDER cooked it and totally ruined it. By the way that was REALLY gross seeing that blood. No one was happy. Yuck. So there you have it, another failed dinner attempt by Rene'. Someday when I am super rich I want a personal chef to cook in our house and make us yummy healthly meals everyday. Wouldn't that be awesome?!