Alongside all of the Saturday morning cartoons, as well as the afternoon cooking programs on our local public broadcasting channel, painter Bob Ross stands out as an influential character in my artistic journey. It was in large part because of him that I ended up dabbling in oil painting and watercolor; and if/when memories of his fro or the scraping of the painter's knife against a canvas fade away, one word will somehow resonate with his seemingly flawless relationship with his work: happy. For those of you who know what I am talking about, I am of course referring to the embellishments Bob would add to his paintings, most notably his happy little clouds, or the tree friends he would add to his compositions. All of this randomness is to say that in a different medium of art--i.e., culinary--I seek happiness through food, and am particularly pleased when I have happy cooking accidents. Last Wednesday, the 13th, marked one such happy cooking accident.
