Musings about Cooking

Shh...I have a secret... I'm not the best cook in the world.

It's not that I'm a bad cook, it's more that I'm an indifferent cook.  Nothing ever comes out quite the way it's supposed to come out.  Even if I follow the recipe exactly the way it's written, something goes... not expectedly.

In college, I'd make Nestle's Toll House Cookies, and they'd come out.... flat, with little chocolate chip mountains.  I'd have my roommate, Kim, double check me every step of the way.... and they'd still come out weird looking.  Tasty, but weird looking.

Last week, my god-neice, Caitlin, made some crêpes for me, so I decided to make Beef Burgundy Crêpes. Went to the store, got all the ingredients, came home, started making them.... and realized that one of the ingredients I thought we had, we didn't actually have.  So, back to the store and then back to the cooking.  I have a problem with chopping onions (yes, even with those "handy choppers") (Side story:  I used to work at Taco Bell when I was in college.  One of the jobs is to put onions in a dicer and pull the lever.  I told them I really couldn't do that, because my eyes would shut.  My co-workers stared at me and said, "Fine, you at least need to know how to do this.  Sure, enough, my eyes shut and I had to be led to the restroom so I could rinse them out enough that I could see.  Profuse apologies from everyone there.  Really, people, if I tell you I can't do something, I really mean I can't do it.  If it's something I don't want to do, I'll say that.), so, instead of dumping the chopped onions into the sauté pan, I dumped them into the stewing pot.  Tried to save as much of the onions as I could, but they didn't really caramelize like they were supposed to.  Oh, well.  Then, as I'm serving the crêpes, I realized I'd forgotten to thicken the stew.  Not a big deal, right?  Then, talking to my friend, Kim, I realized that instead of using wine and beef broth for the stew, I used wine and water.  But, the crêpes tasted okay.  Weird, but okay.

I do have a few recipes that I make pretty well: Salsa, Guacamole, Black Eyed Pea Dip, Beef Stew, Chili and Hummingbird Cake.  I've actually gotten well known around here for my Salsa (which really is more of a Pico de Gallo, than a salsa, because salsa is just Spanish for sauce).  Except for the Hummingbird Cake, most of these recipes are "chop and dump," so maybe that explains my success with them.

Oh well.  There's always take-out, right?  There's a joke around here that houses in Columbia come with kitchens optional, because no one in Columbia cooks.  Sounds like I'd fit right in.  Luckily though, my husband is a pretty decent cook.

Time to go aMuse myself.... just not in the kitchen.....