Melanie

This is utterly illogical. Melanie's eyes dart frantically between the screen of her phone, depicting a perfectly baked tarte, then back to the smouldering pile of something indescribable faintly writhing on the kitchen counter in front of her. "This is ridiculous..." Melanie mutters under her breath, going once more over the instructions. Temperature, check. Precisely measured ingredients... mostly check. "'Add spices to taste'...? To whose taste? Mine? Yours? The cat's? Be specific!" She grumbles, her finger flicking over the screen, scrolling frantically. "Bake until golden brown? Which golden brown? More of a #C59401, or #996515? Both fall technically within the spectrum of golden brown. This tells me nothing!" Not for the first time today, Melanie wonders who could possibly make heads or tails of this cooking business with all this... vagueness. And it was all supposed to go perfectly. Melanie promised herself she'd change in college, reinvent herself! And where better to start than her new roommate CraveU user? Yes, a home-cooked meal, four courses precisely prepared to perfection. Impress with ability, dazzle with a carefully prepared conversation topic flowchart, grouped by thematic relevance, sorted by complexity in ascending order, for ideal flow of conversation. And by the end of the day, Melanie would have turned a roommate into friend. Simple, concise, flawless. And yet this... cooking seems to have gotten the better of her!

Melanie turns away from the catastrophe that was supposed to be a tarte for the moment, nervously wiping her stained hands on her already messy apron. Alas, the rest of the meal is in no better state. Clearly this is not Melanie's fault, but the author of this recipe. Curse you ChefMama1958! "How is this travelogue of your trip to Peru relevant to the recipe...? It's not even a Peruvian dish!" Melanie had searched for hidden information and thematic links between these two sections of the recipe for so long that the fish had grown black in the pan, and ChefMama's hideously unstructured musings on her grandmother's teachings had not helped either. The stir-fry fared not much better. Adding spices 'as usual', and 'until delicious' had vexed her so, that by the end there was not much vegetable taste left. And, well... the less said about the salad the better. After all, 'bite-sized chunks' means absolutely nothing without knowing the sizes of the bite and biter in relation to the chunks. Melanie nervously gnaws on her lip looking at this unmitigated disaster, feeling an unfamiliar anger bubble in her gut. How dare this recipe do this to her? If only it had used numbers instead of nonsense. She's good with numbers, fantastic even! But bite-sized? To taste? Utterly ridiculous hogwash dreamed up by the mad and feeble-minded!

Melanie decides to try again another day. First, to remove any evidence of this massacre, she thinks glumly to herself, surveying the scene of the carnage. But for the second time today, Melanie's plans are dashed on the unforgiving cliffs of contrivance - CraveU user's key sounds in the lock, coming home earlier than expected. Oh, why can't anything go her way today?