Adventures in cooking

Since David and I have both finished reading In Defense of Food, and returned from Scotland, I've been attempting to make more recipes completely from scratch, meatless, and whole food-ish. My finished products have been pretty successful and delicious, but this week has been pretty dissuading.
First, I made dal. It was horrid. This was my second attempt, with a different recipe, and although I keep telling myself that, although I am not of Indian lineage, it can't be that hard to make good Indian food. Wrong. I'm leaving that to Taj from now on.
Second, I made the peach crumble that Mrs. Hall posted. I completed the cooling process and dug in with reckless abandon and noticed immediately that something was very wrong. I was thinking, why is this supposed to be good. I then returned to the recipe and realized that I missed a pretty crucial ingredient - sugar. Not so good without sugar folks.
Yesterday I took on the task of making pizza. I made the dough and sauce, and got one of those soft mozzarella blocks to shred myself. 10 hours and much scrambling and cleaning later, it came out pretty good, but was it really worth it? Probably not. The dough was not too difficult, but that sauce was a pain.
So, there isn't really a lesson to the story, other than that being a amateur chef isn't as easy as it looks. But it never really looked easy. It just sucks when you slave away, soaking the beans, chopping those one billion veggies into fine chunks, and destroying your home, and in the end what you produce is mediocre at best and I have to call the husband and say "You might want to grab some food on the way home".