The Beginnings of Senility?

A couple of weeks ago, for dinner, I made a broccoli, tofu and udon dish. I often make this simple yet tasty dish. In fact, I made it again tonight. Stir-fry the broccoli, add the tofu and noodles and then the sauce. The only remotely complicated part of it is getting the sauce to thicken with cornstarch. This is not at all difficult, but if one had to choose the most difficult stage of the process, this would be it. And yet, on this night a couple of weeks ago the sauce just wouldn't thicken. The only thing I could think of was that I hadn't used enough cornstarch. So, I added more of it. Still no luck. No problem, I just decided I'd eat it with the runny sauce. Or at least try to...because for some reason it tasted nasty. And I mean nasty. Nasty enough that I threw the whole thing out. We're talking about a guy whose ex-roommates would be pleased when he was gone as it meant they didn't have to eat or could throw out the vegetables that they considered to be off but were well within the realm of edible for me. And to think I did most of the cooking for those ingrates. Anyhow, I digress. Nasty, nasty tasting business...the whole thing went into the garburator. Speaking of which, you probably didn't know it but the word garburator is a canadianism. I'm assuming you didn't know that because I didn't know that until a few moments ago and chances are that if I didn't know it, you didn't either. There you go, now this blog is educational. And yet again, I digress. So, I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. Runny sauce wouldn't have altered the taste that much, certainly not enough to make it disgustingly inedible. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps the broccoli had been a little off. Anyhow, I ended up eating something else for dinner and didn't think much more about it. A few days later I was straightening up the kitchen a little, putting some things that I'd left out away, tidying up, etc. And I just couldn't figure out why the baking soda was out on the counter. But as I put it away it donned on me...it was sitting right in the spot where I might have left a box of cornstarch, had I had one out any time recently. And apparently I hadn't. Damn. Is it all down hill from here?