Thursday, July 1, 2010

Following the Recipe

You've been hearing quite a bit about our food lately. Primarily because with these new silly 40 hour work weeks at the end of the day the only place left for creativity is in my food. My taste buds are enjoying it. My fabric and yarn...not so much.

Because I'm using food as my creativity outlet, recipes have become less of a set of instructions and more like guidelines. For some reason I hardly feel obligated to follow the ingredients, measurments, and even steps. Is this normal? Do the rest of you view a recepe as merely inspiration for your own masterpiece?

Take for example the Prosciutto, Spinach, and Pasta Casserole(Found in the Better Homes and Garden's Plaid Cookbook):
Ah this has spinach. We have lots of spinach from Costco. I'll do that. Except, ours is fresh.
And I'd rather use bacon.
And cook the onions and garlic in some of the bacon grease for less dairy.
Ooooh I dont like Anise. I'll trade our for Italian seasoning.
A dallop of sourcream wont hurt...I didn't use butter.
Hmmm maybe just a bit more flour.
Ooops, too thick more chicken broth.
I'm scared of our oven, pie dish fits in our toaster oven, lets use that.

Aw man we have mushrooms, I should have cooked those with the onions.
Luke doesnt like em anyway. Ill saute some and put them on top of mine.

Ok. Really. Does this even qualify as the same dish anymore?


Ps. Made lemon sorbet. Minced the lemon peel because we don't have a zester. Didn't like the idea of all the chunks in our sorbet. Straining them out seemed like too much work.

Busted out the immersion blender. Realised not only does it make peel chunks smaller, but also whips air into the mixture to keep it from getting ROCK HARD after putting it in the freezer for a bit. To this day it is still light and fluffy thanks to the RED immersion blender.

PPs. I'm pretty sure all of our red kitchen goodies and amazing flavor and goodness to the food, just by being red.
PPPs. The side benefit of making Lemon Sorbet is that you have lemon juice ready to go on fresh avacado slices to then be sprinkled with salt. One of my favorite snacks. Noteworthy moment: This is the best avacado I have found outside of California.

4 comments:

Live a Colorful Life said...

that all made me REALLY hungry!

Little Spouse in the Old House said...

Sounds like you are becoming a "seasoned" cook! Love, Janice

The Luedtke Family said...

I tried to grow my own avocado tree by soaking the pit to sprout. I gave up after two weeks without a sprout. Will try again. Next time, save the pit, grow your own tree, pick a snack. Delectable!!!

Anonymous said...

yum avacado.
valpal