Confessions Of A Cook

[Wenmin]

My mom tells this story to almost everyone. Guess I could share it here. ( I vaguely remember it)

I was about 7 years old. Used to be persuaded by my dad to bake sweets or fix ice cream. So one night dad persuaded me to make some brownies. I read the directions and got all the ingredients right. Except, the directions said 200 strokes by hand. Well, I literally was mixing the brownies "by hand". I had both hands in the brownie mix and was counting 200 strokes. Had brownie mix up to my elbows.....

Wenmin

[ranger]

When I was first married (centuries ago!), I did not know how to cook. Don't know why -both parents were great cooks and I took the perfunctory home ec class, but I was clueless. One day, I decided to not open a can of dinner, and bake a meatloaf. I remembered that my Mother put green pepper in it, so I chopped up one, threw it in a pound of ground beef, shaped it into a meatloaf, and thew it into the oven. Needless to say, it was a "little" dry.

Believe it or not, I went on to become a chef and even had my own restaurant!

[mushroom]

Another first married story...My mother used to make what she called Mince Stew (mince being ground beef, although a lot leaner than its American counterpart). So anyway, I had the basic idea, simmer it in water, add salt and pepper, thicken with flour and water, seemed like the right thing to do...What a tasteless, greasy mess of grey globs that was!! Haha, Clay thought he would have to eat out for the rest of his life. I had no cookbooks at the time

[HydraWoman]

My dad was a great cook and I was making spaghetti sauce one night from his recipe, he called for 2 tbsp of sugar and I did not have any....so I substituted with 2 tbsp of raw honey I had. Needless to say the sauce turned out not only super sweet but sticky.

Same recipe as above only this time I substituted a tbsp of garlic powder with a tbsp of garlic salt.....needless to say too salty to eat.

[mushroom]

I decided to make some mac and cheese for my parents. Now I have always considered other versions of mac and cheese to be a bit bland for my taste, so I hunted around for old, sharp cheese and used lots of it, several different kinds, and just made up a recipe by what I thought should go in there (not having made from scratch before) and being (overly) confident in my cooking talents. My mom said it was going to taste baaad, but I insisted the cheese could not be too sharp because you needed to overcome the blandness of the mac. Gack, mom was right, practically inedible even for me.

[ang1e0251]

In 1970 my dad saw a demonstration of an exciting new product, the microwave oven! He was so taken he brought one home. We had never heard of this and I would bet we were the first in our town to have one. We proceeded to try everything in it!

We blew up marshmallows, we wanted strawberry shortcake so we put in a plastic carton of frozen strawberries... for 5 minutes! Ok we melted the plastic all over the glass tray. That was just a learning curve, right?

One of the first things my mom wanted to cook was hard boiled eggs. She put in a large bowl of eggs with water and gave the extended time dial a spin. We forgot about it but in a few minutes we started to hear strange sounds. That was followed by this ...smell... Oh yeah, the eggs exploded and the mess was terrific!

[Juliebove]

In 1970 my dad saw a demonstration of an exciting new product, the microwave oven! He was so taken he brought one home. We had never heard of this and I would bet we were the first in our town to have one. We proceeded to try everything in it!

We blew up marshmallows, we wanted strawberry shortcake so we put in a plastic carton of frozen strawberries... for 5 minutes! Ok we melted the plastic all over the glass tray. That was just a learning curve, right?

One of the first things my mom wanted to cook was hard boiled eggs. She put in a large bowl of eggs with water and gave the extended time dial a spin. We forgot about it but in a few minutes we started to hear strange sounds. That was followed by this ...smell... Oh yeah, the eggs exploded and the mess was terrific!

That reminds me. I had a friend spend the night. Her parents were divorced. She lived with her dad and he was the swinging single type. He had monogrammed drinking glasses, a refrigerator with an ice maker and always had Laughing Cow cheese bits in the refrigerator. Of course he had all the latest gadgets too.

My friend and I decided to cook breakfast. My mom was out of town so it was just my dad and brother in the house. We scrambled the eggs and I was going to put them in the pan. My friend looked at me strangely and said she always cooked them on a paper plate! I was like... Huh? How can you cook eggs on a paper plate?

She assured me that she could. My dad came into the kitchen just as she was putting the plate on the burner and about to pour the eggs on top. He freaked!

Turns out they had a microwave at home and that was the only way she knew how to cook eggs. I still can't see cooking them on a plate! My husband does them in a paper bowl. Why a paper bowl? Because he refuses to add any fat to the eggs. After welding eggs to all of my Corelle dishes and me with an egg allergy, I refused to allow him to do it that way any more.

[luvs2eat]

Just this past Thanksgiving, a neighbor invited a bunch of people over for dinner. She went far out of her way to accommodate me and I brought my favorite gluten free (crust) pecan pie to go w/ her pumpkin pie. Everyone enjoyed my pie but by the time I got home, I was sick as a dog!! Couldn't figure out what I'd done to poison myself!! It wasn't till a few days later when I was making a pumpkin pie for my husband I realized I made the pecan pie crust w/ my gluten free recipe... using regular wheat flour.

DUH!!!

Now my gluten free flour mix has a HUGE sign on it!