Food Chat thread - for general convo by food forum regulars (vanilla, beans)
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One of my sons raved about a fritter another mother made. I called to find out what it was made from, and she told me eggplant. That was one vegetable my kids despised (although 2 of them like it now, years later). I did try to duplicate the recipe she shared with me, but when I made it, I got "ewwws".
I have done that too! It must be the special touch they have.
Honestly ... I've used the packets, and I've done my own spice blend, and the results aren't significantly different. If I have enough of the spices on hand, I'll make my own blend, but if the packets are on sale (my store frequently does 'buy 2/get 3 free'), I'll just go ahead and pick up a few of those. Sometimes it's nice not to have to get the various spices down and measure everything out.
This is my experience. The difference in blending seasoning myself in the moment, and using what's in a jar, premixed by Penzeys, is negligible, for the most part, if the proportions are comparable.
On the occasion when I do grind cumin from the seed in my molcajete, it smells fantastic, no doubt...but in the end, the tacos or chili or whatever taste, honestly, pretty much the same.
I do agree that it's dumb to be like, "Oh, my son loves your food, how do you do it?" and then, when told, be like, "Oh, never mind, I'm not going to bother with all THAT." Why ask?
I'm surprised the son noticed the difference, if he'd been raised on "mixes". My sister is a terrible cook, and any time we'd have a family event and I'd bring something homemade, they'd turn up their noses at it and eat only what their mother brought. They don't know any better. I stopped bringing my homemade "bunny" cake to Easter because they preferred a store bought cake with that lovely grease frosting. GAG! They wouldn't eat my veggies baked with homemade cheddar cheese sauce, but they'd eat her frozen green beans right out of the microwave, undrained, with Kraft singles layed over the top.
Have you had someone ask you for a recipe and then argue with you if it seems not what they wanted?
ETA: Just to clarify, I have no problem with the use of packets. The conversation started as her son didn't like her tacos and asking me what I did to mine.
Oh yes - oh yes, oh yes, oh yes! Several examples come to mind.
1. One Christmas, I made cookies as gifts for a bunch of our friends - a platter with about 12 different kinds. One person in particular asked me for a recipe that he and his family had RAVED about and I gave it to him - and he then said that it looked far too labor intensive (it was one of my grandmother's recipes from her family's bakery back in Sweden) and didn't I have any shortcuts?
No, Ray, I don't - they take as long as they take. If they DIDN'T take as long as they take, they wouldn't be the same cookie, now would they?
2. Party related - we had a potluck at our office (we all telecommute so those of us that live in the area get together in the actual office once in a blue moon and make it sort of a "party") and someone I hadn't seen in ages raved and raved about my cheese dip. It's called "Cheese Crack" by my extended friends and family and she was dying for the recipe. I gave it to her and she immediately exclaimed, "But I don't LIKE blue cheese. What else can I put in it?"
Gloria, darling, you like it just fine as witnessed by the fact that you just ate half of it - that's the recipe!! If you change it, it won't be - um - the SAME RECIPE!
3. My son went off to find his fame and fortune in the Navy, and once he was settled, started cooking for himself. One of the first dishes he tried was Macaroni & Cheese and Smoked Sausage. He wanted a taste of home, that was one of his absolute favorites, and I figured it was really, really easy - how could he POSSIBLY mess this up? He works on nuclear submarines - surely Mac and Cheese and Smoked Sausage would be EASY! I told him EXACLTY what to buy - right down to the PANS. Here was my list: Kraft Original Macaroni & Cheese Deluxe Dinner - the kind with the cheese in a package - NOT THE KIND THAT IS IN A NARROW BOX AND USES THE CHEESE POWDER, and a package of Hillshire Farm Beef Smoked Sausage. Butter. A Colander (it sits in the sink, has holes all over it, and you drain things in it. A saucepan like the copper bottomed one I use at home all the time. A small frying pan just like the one we use at home all the time for the sausage. He already had the rest of the stuff he would need or his roommates did (sharp knife, cutting board, tongs, spoons - stuff like that.) I made this as simple as I could. I told him to follow the directions on the macaroni and cheese box, and make sure to drain it well. For the sausage, I told him exactly how to cut it, and what temperature to fry it on in a frying pan in butter (not margarine) in a skillet. Sure enough I got a call - "MOOOOOOMMMMMM - it turned out TERRIBLE! You must have written it down wrong."
Me to son - tell me how it turned out. What was wrong?
Him - the macaroni was all watery and mooshy and the cheese stuff wouldn't melt like it was supposed to. And the sausage was burned and greasy and cold in the middle.
Me - Hmmm - at this point I went a little "Kitchen CSI" on him and asked him specifically what he did.
Turns out he didn't buy the frying pan like I told him to (too much hassle), he didn't cut up the sausage and fry it in the butter like I told him to (length of preparation time was far too long, I suppose), he decided to use the noodle pot to fry the uncut sausage, cooking oil because he forgot to buy butter, had done all this on HIGH (it would COOK faster, mom and I was HUNGRY) and had taken the noodles, when he thought they were done - somewhere around fifteen minutes of boiling because he forgot to set the timer on the microwave - dumped off the water instead of straining in a colander (he was in too much of a hurry to look for one at the store - he had video games to get back to) and put them in a bowl to sit and get cold while he did the sausage. The end result was "the macaroni was all watery and mooshy and the cheese stuff wouldn't melt like it was supposed to. And the sausage was burned and greasy and cold in the middle." So I must have written it down wrong.
Me. Sigh. How soon is your next leave? I'll start cooking NOW.
My husband is terrible about this too - he wants to "help" in the kitchen. I have to keep an eagle eye on every move he makes because I'll have something marinating and he'll start throwing stuff in the bag - I'll have chicken coated and ready to go in the oven and he's standing there with a pepper grinder - and then he has the nerve to tell me that it doesn't taste right (and to me, it is inedible half the time) - I must have done something wrong!
It's like the AllRecipes curse - here's a recipe, try it out! And then review after review is a terrible one because the person making it substituted this or that, cooked it longer, or shorter, or at a different temperature - they completely change the whole tenor of the recipe and it's no longer THE DARN RECIPE!
It's like the AllRecipes curse - here's a recipe, try it out! And then review after review is a terrible one because the person making it substituted this or that, cooked it longer, or shorter, or at a different temperature - they completely change the whole tenor of the recipe and it's no longer THE DARN RECIPE!
This is one of my biggest pet peeves! Someone will rate a recipe one star, then say "I followed this recipe TO THE LETTER except I used chicken in place of the beef, I left out the peppers because I don't like them, I didn't have any garlic or onions, I added carrots and mushrooms because I like them, and I didn't have any stock so I just used water. And my oven is broken, so I did it in the crock pot and guessed at how long I should cook it. It didn't look or taste ANYTHING like the recipe said it would. SOOOO disappointed!" Moron.
Laughing at these stories. I'll add a pet peeve, while we're on the topic of following directions, although it's on the flip side. Some people really don't give ENOUGH directions! There is one author whose books about cooking I love to read because the stories are entertaining, but the recipes are just so awful. I don't know if no one proofreads them or if she just assumes her readers already know how to cook so intuitively they don't actually need recipes, or what it is. For example, here are her directions for "vegetarian chili": combine dried beans, a chopped onion, garlic, canned tomatoes, and water in a big pot. Heat on a low flame for four hours.
She say this is "embarrassingly simple and always tastes wonderful." Um, simple it is, but the embarrassing part is that this will produce a bland bean soup. Isn't chili supposed to have, well, CHILI POWDER in it at least?
It's like the AllRecipes curse - here's a recipe, try it out! And then review after review is a terrible one because the person making it substituted this or that, cooked it longer, or shorter, or at a different temperature - they completely change the whole tenor of the recipe and it's no longer THE DARN RECIPE!
So yeah, I feel your pain.
This drives me nuts, too; when reviewers have not made the original recipe as written, and then complain about it.
Honestly ... I've used the packets, and I've done my own spice blend, and the results aren't significantly different. If I have enough of the spices on hand, I'll make my own blend, but if the packets are on sale (my store frequently does 'buy 2/get 3 free'), I'll just go ahead and pick up a few of those. Sometimes it's nice not to have to get the various spices down and measure everything out.
I measure out enough spices to fill an empty spice jar I have. That way I'm not measuring everything out each and every time. If I forget to refill it, and I'm being lazy, I just add the spices directly to the meat without measuring. I know what goes in it and I know approximately how much of each spice there should be so it turns out about the same.
I measure out enough spices to fill an empty spice jar I have. That way I'm not measuring everything out each and every time. If I forget to refill it, and I'm being lazy, I just add the spices directly to the meat without measuring. I know what goes in it and I know approximately how much of each spice there should be so it turns out about the same.
I tried premixing to an empty spice jar, and I'd always forget to refill it. So for me, sometimes ripping open a packet is a lot easier than pulling multiple jars out of the pantry, with similar results.
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It's a curse. Truly, it is.
