Master chef loses his golden touch

Well, the heading puts it rather mildly. I am having a pretty poor run of results in cooking. All started of with my birthday

Episode –1 : Killer Coconut
Dosa-Chutney is one of my favorites, so what better dish to have on birthday night ? Except for the small fact that I actually left the coconut that I grated the previous day outside the fridge by mistake. I had no spare coconut, so birthday night was spent as usual with a tall glass of cold water :-(

Episode-2: Old man and the porotta
Birthday was a washout but I was determined to eat something nice at least the next day. Went to MK retail, brought some chicken and gravy paste and made a Kolhapuri chicken curry. Kerala porotta(paratha) goes very well with spicy chicken curries. I eagerly opened my fridge to heat up some ready to eat porottas. To my dismay I realized that I had forgotten to stock those. Brain degeneration due to old age, I guess. So this time I had chicken gravy, but no porottas :-( Summary : No food

Episode-3: Revenge of the prawns
Resolve grew stronger when weekend arrived. Saturday saw yet another trip to MK retail, this time I returned with some frozen prawns, determined to make a dry type prawn masala. Marination of prawns went well, the masala came out looking nice and aromatic. All that was left was to mix the prawns in the masala and let it simmer for 20-25 minutes.
Happily I kept it in a closed vessel and went off to do some Facebook-ing on my computer. Returned back 20 mins later to find acrid smell and smoke spreading through the kitchen.  I had forgotten to put the gas on low flame :-((( All that was left was a deep black charred mass .. Siggghhhhhhhh .
Summary : No food

Episode 4: Return of the hogger
Thankfully that was Diwali day and I was saved by invitations from Daya and Chatter Box !!. Massive hogging sessions in the evenings offset the losses of previous days :-). Had a really nice time, bursting crackers, lighting Diyas, attending prayer , eating good food and having nice company on weekends for a change. Felt so happy when I got back home that I celebrated it by sleeping most of Sunday :) Life was indeed looking great !!

Episode 5: The final nail in the coffin
The next weekend arrived and I had to do something to keep from starving. Decided to fall back upon a tried and tested item – Appam. Now you may say that I should have seen it coming, but frankly I did not. Appam’s came out disastrous. They were refusing to spread on my non stick pan, and even when I could get the batter to spread, it was forming lumps all over !! :-(( This time I was so hungry that I had to eat up all the pathetic creations.

For the next 3 days my family is going to be here, so maybe a short break would help restore my confidence.