One of my favorite activities is browsing through pinterest and drooling over every perfectly photographed scrumptious bite. I love to cook, everyone who knows me will agree with that. I also love to experiment...maybe a little too much. I'll be honest. I rarely get it perfect the first time. As much as my boyfriend is a sweetheart and eats everything I put in front of him, I know not everything I serve him is delicious...(in fact I'm not even sure everything should even be classified as edible...)
But that doesn't stop me! As I scroll Pinterest's plethora of brightly colored, attractively photographed recipes I can't help but have my mouth watering on every other recipe. With the recent advent of so much more recognition towards not just vegetarian lifestyles, but also vegan, pescatarian, lacto-vegetarian and so many other choices, it's impossible to NOT find something I want to devour!
However, I struggle when it comes to following the recipe. I'll see the picture, briefly scroll through the ingredients, and then make it. For some reason it's almost impossible for me to just sit down and follow a recipe, even though I know my food would turn out 99% of the time if I would just follow the damn recipe! I just can't though! It's like I'll look at the recipe, agree that whoever made it up was really on to something, and then do everything in my power to change it to make it EVEN BETTER! Sometimes I'll hit gold and it really does turn out fantastic. Most of the time it comes out tasting about the same as it would have if I would have just followed the recipe. And occasionally... well... let's just say I wind up ordering Pizza and taking the batteries out of the smoke alarms.
One of the reasons that I am so damn persistent in doing things my own way is because if I don't clearly understand the process being used then I want to try a process I do understand instead. Or, if I have time, experiment with the one being implemented until I understand the WHY and the HOW of what I'm doing. One thing that I did learn from my years of culinary school is that cooking is not just an art form. It's also a chemistry project. Baking soda, yeast, alcohol, vinegar, whipping, beating, folding. Even choosing between a copper pan and an aluminum pan. There is a lot that goes into cooking that most people don't even know about. And honestly, if I could just follow the goshdarn recipe, I wouldn't run into so many of these problems!
I have come to accept however that I cannot follow a recipe. It's just not in my nature. And well that may mean that we occasionally dine on Papa John's three nights in a row, it also means that I have some damn good trial and error tested recipes under my belt. I'm always getting more too - especially now that I have normal, boring, banker hours again! More than just having absolutely tantalizing, delicious recipes however, I also know WHY and HOW. I don't just have a list of ingredients and an order that you put them together, I have a process, and I know how much flexibility I have in that process which in a way is very freeing, and inspiring. I know that I can make countless variations of my spicy stir fry sauce, change quantities, switch out vinegars, add extra lemon zest ect. But if I switch the sesame oil for olive oil, I'm going to have a burnt smelly mess on my hands!
I come from a family of damn good cooks: My mom made everything from peanut butter, to pickled beans to a hot loaf of bread from scratch when I was a kid. My grandma made the best strawberry jam on the planet, my aunt has molasses cookies that will make you happy to put on your holiday weight. The culinary streak has continued with my generation as well. My cousin married a fantastic cook, and my brother makes a mean bowl of mashed potatoes (among other things). I feel it's the least I can do to chronicle some of these tried and true recipes. If anyone uses them once and it brings a smile to their face, or the face of a loved one I'll consider it a success. I'm going to try to post at least one recipe a week that I have made multiple times, the most recent being that week. We'll see how that goes.
On that note I will leave you with the coolest thing I have seen all year so far (I think his license plates were expired, but still, that's one hell of a ride!):
Happy Cooking and May the Force be With You!
P.S. I am a vegetarian, so most of my recipes are going to follow with that, however I live with a voracious meat eater, as are most of my friends and family, so most (not all) recipes will have meaty options.
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