Awful Recipes: Recipes for Disaster
The Facebook page "Awful Recipes: Recipes for Disaster" makes you appreciate the yummy Tasty videos filling the rest of your feed. Although most experiences baking and cooking recipes are good, some are negative. A recipe is a set of instructions for making something using certain ingredients. The Facebook page "Awful Recipes: Recipes for Disaster" is made up of videos of disgusting dishes showing how combining the wrong ingredients together can lead to disaster. This idea of a disastrous recipe can apply to books as well. Series of events and scenes mixed together with emotions can produce unfortunate outcomes. In Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, the combination of ingredients, scenes, and emotions, can create a recipe for disaster.
In Everything I Never Told You, the series of events leading up to James and Marilyn's wedding creates a recipe for disaster, which affects the relationship between Marilyn and her mom. Marilyn's mom is a close minded woman, who is stubborn in her belief that there's only one way for a woman to live a proper life. She attempts to mold Marilyn, from a young age, into the perfect stereotypical girl. Despite her efforts, Marilyn ends up being the complete opposite of what she wished, creating tension between the two. Marilyn also resents her mother for trying to hold her back from breaking the stereotype, another key ingredient in this recipe. 
In response to their troubled marriage, James turns to the last ingredient in this recipe for disaster: Louisa. Louisa provides an escape from James's home life, which is full of tension and sorrow. The combination of a new exciting relationship with Louisa and the other ingredients making up the recipe for disaster drive James to cheat on Marilyn.
Recipes for disasters are created throughout the book Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng by mixing series of event and character's emotions together. In Everything I Never Told You, Ng crafts perfect examples of disaster. These examples of experience and emotions leading up to something disastrous show life through a realistic and eye-opening lens. We are surrounded by recipes for disaster in our everyday life. Although sometimes if feels like everything is going great, these is bound to be a time when if feels like anything that could go wrong does. In this book, Ng recognizes and embraces this reality. She uses if to craft example of recipes for disaster that are relatable. Ng teaches us the lesson that although disastrous outcomes are inevitable, there is often one ingredient of event leading to the end the could have saved the dish or situation. We should strive to learn from this lesson and become more aware of our mistakes or what we could have done differently so that the next time the recipe might be a little less disastrous.
The third ingredient is Marilyn's mother's stubbornness and racism. Because she is stuck in her old fashioned ways, Marilyn's mom thinks that it is "just not right" for Marilyn to marry an oriental. She thinks that the only reason he's marrying her is to get a green card. Marilyn's mom also tells Marilyn that the only thing that will come from her marriage is a feeling of not belonging, saying "Think about you children. Where will you live? You won't fit in anywhere" (Ng 54).
As a result of all the ingredients, the resentment and tension between Marilyn and her mother grows to such an extent that their relationship is shattered. The recipe for disaster created by the combination of a series of events and build up of emotions throughout the years generated a tragic dish: a broken relationship garnished with anger and bitterness.
Another example of a recipe for disaster in Everything I Never Told You is the combination of events leading up to James cheating on Marilyn. This recipe starts to form as soon as James and Marilyn exit the "honeymoon phase" of their marriage. At this point, Marilyn is dissatisfied with her life. As a solution, she runs away from James, Nath, and Lydia to complete her education and start a job, trying to make something out of herself. Although she eventually returns, new feelings of distrust and disconnect exist between Marilyn and James.
These new feelings become blatantly obvious after Lydia dies. Although the couple wishes they could be comforted by each other, they are unable to connect or talk in this time of need. This is apparent when the narrator says, “For a moment James considers joining Marilyn in their bedroom. He’s filled with a deep longing to burrow against her, to feel her weight and warmth surrounding him, shielding him from everything else, to cling to her and feel her cling to him and let their bodies comfort each other” (Ng 68). Although James wants to be comforted by Marilyn, he can't get over their differences and initiate communication. To make matters worse, Marilyn is so stuck to her own opinion of what happened to Lydia that she ends up turning James in the bad guy, widening the space between them.
In Everything I Never Told You, the series of events leading up to James and Marilyn's wedding creates a recipe for disaster, which affects the relationship between Marilyn and her mom. Marilyn's mom is a close minded woman, who is stubborn in her belief that there's only one way for a woman to live a proper life. She attempts to mold Marilyn, from a young age, into the perfect stereotypical girl. Despite her efforts, Marilyn ends up being the complete opposite of what she wished, creating tension between the two. Marilyn also resents her mother for trying to hold her back from breaking the stereotype, another key ingredient in this recipe. 
In response to their troubled marriage, James turns to the last ingredient in this recipe for disaster: Louisa. Louisa provides an escape from James's home life, which is full of tension and sorrow. The combination of a new exciting relationship with Louisa and the other ingredients making up the recipe for disaster drive James to cheat on Marilyn. Recipes for disasters are created throughout the book Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng by mixing series of event and character's emotions together. In Everything I Never Told You, Ng crafts perfect examples of disaster. These examples of experience and emotions leading up to something disastrous show life through a realistic and eye-opening lens. We are surrounded by recipes for disaster in our everyday life. Although sometimes if feels like everything is going great, these is bound to be a time when if feels like anything that could go wrong does. In this book, Ng recognizes and embraces this reality. She uses if to craft example of recipes for disaster that are relatable. Ng teaches us the lesson that although disastrous outcomes are inevitable, there is often one ingredient of event leading to the end the could have saved the dish or situation. We should strive to learn from this lesson and become more aware of our mistakes or what we could have done differently so that the next time the recipe might be a little less disastrous.
The third ingredient is Marilyn's mother's stubbornness and racism. Because she is stuck in her old fashioned ways, Marilyn's mom thinks that it is "just not right" for Marilyn to marry an oriental. She thinks that the only reason he's marrying her is to get a green card. Marilyn's mom also tells Marilyn that the only thing that will come from her marriage is a feeling of not belonging, saying "Think about you children. Where will you live? You won't fit in anywhere" (Ng 54).
As a result of all the ingredients, the resentment and tension between Marilyn and her mother grows to such an extent that their relationship is shattered. The recipe for disaster created by the combination of a series of events and build up of emotions throughout the years generated a tragic dish: a broken relationship garnished with anger and bitterness.
Another example of a recipe for disaster in Everything I Never Told You is the combination of events leading up to James cheating on Marilyn. This recipe starts to form as soon as James and Marilyn exit the "honeymoon phase" of their marriage. At this point, Marilyn is dissatisfied with her life. As a solution, she runs away from James, Nath, and Lydia to complete her education and start a job, trying to make something out of herself. Although she eventually returns, new feelings of distrust and disconnect exist between Marilyn and James.
These new feelings become blatantly obvious after Lydia dies. Although the couple wishes they could be comforted by each other, they are unable to connect or talk in this time of need. This is apparent when the narrator says, “For a moment James considers joining Marilyn in their bedroom. He’s filled with a deep longing to burrow against her, to feel her weight and warmth surrounding him, shielding him from everything else, to cling to her and feel her cling to him and let their bodies comfort each other” (Ng 68). Although James wants to be comforted by Marilyn, he can't get over their differences and initiate communication. To make matters worse, Marilyn is so stuck to her own opinion of what happened to Lydia that she ends up turning James in the bad guy, widening the space between them.
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