Cooking

I wouldn't say I'm a great cook, though I'm far from being a bad cook. I'd call myself a fair cook. I don't have any training and not much experience, no natural talent, but it interests me and I'm game on experimenting. I'd call Chad a poor cook, though not a bad one. He has no training, experience, talent or interest in cooking at all, but if he really tried, he'd do fine.
This month though, I have not been having much luck in the kitchen. I have had to throw out a lot of food (which I hate doing) and I have broken some of my supplies.
The matzah I made for passover was less than a hit, and most of it ended up in the trash.
The gefilte fish also didn't pan out, though I did make it into wrapped dumplings, but it took me so long to figure out how to rescue the fish, that it went bad before we could eat it all (I was planning on it feeding 7 adults once, not 2 adults forever).
I broke my only remaining non-attachment whisk (I think I'll have to add it to things I can't seem to keep long without breaking - like watches and sunglasses) making a red-velvet cake, which turned out way too dry and I ended up eating most of it myself since no one else wanted more than 1 slice and I refused to throw it away.
I tried to make a kind of sweet rye bread, which refused to rise and also went the way of the trash.
I made a soup with the rest of the seitan I had in the freezer, as well as some barley I recently bought (I was missing barley for some reason.) Two unfamiliar textures did not go over well with Chad. I had to threaten him with no food at all until it was gone to get him to eat it the second day. I ate it myself for 3 days, lunch and dinner.
Just the other day, I forgot about the rice and it turned nicely brown, though thankfully did not burn. The asparagus steaming over it (also forgotten) turned to mush and Chad did not find it an appetizing texture, especially when I tried to use it as part of a filling in boiled cabbage-leaf wraps (think stuffed grape leaves), though it could have been the cabbage he objected to more. Some of that was eaten, but much was thrown in the trash (yes Chad, I did see that.)
Most recently I was making peanut butter cupcakes for Happy's birthday, which called for brown sugar. I cannot keep my brown sugar from solidifying, but I'd read that warming it in the microwave will soften it. I did that and it seemed to work, so I dumped it in the batter. Only the top half was soft, so there were lumps in my batter. As I tried to smash out the lumps, my wooden spoon broke in half... the lumps remained. I also was trying to half the recipe because I didn't want 24 muffins, but I wasn't paying attention and put in 2 eggs instead of one. So I added less milk. They taste good, but are a little dry and dense. I also broke one of my silicone cupcake molds (I know, it takes talent to break silicone.)
It has been a month for cooking errors (mostly baking) but it's almost May, so hopefully I will fare better next month. I'm sure there will be more mistakes, just hopefully not so many so close together! And these are not the worst cooking mistakes I've made either. Like melting a collander and smoking up the house, or mysteriously crunchy things in my dinner rolls, or any number of other stories. Anyone else have disasters in the kitchen? Or am I just a cooking klutz?