With the near constant recipe development that goes on around here, nothing pleases me more than nailing down a recipe that wins my family’s approval, because when that happens–that means I get to share it with my friends. (That’s you!)
Once shared, I really hope that I’ve explained things in such a way that you get excited about the food and want to try them at home. Fact: There is no higher praise for a Food Blogger than for someone to try their recipes. We live for that stuff.
But I’ve got to be honest here…for every recipe that kicks some serious Culinary Hiney, there are at least three others that didn’t make the cut. OK, four. Maybe more.
My kitchen is in various stages of disarray every day. My automatic dishwasher works overtime and is totally underpaid.
Sometimes even great recipes look like globs of fecal matter due to my photographic learning curve, and no amount of Photoshop will make it look even the least bit appetizing.
Then there are the recipes that no amount of “pretty” can compensate for the taste. This is a beef stew that I was working on. I was trying to replicate a stew that a friend brought over right after I had Son #2. She told me that it had an entire bottle of red wine in the mix, but you never would have known it by the flavor. Her stew was succulent, and spicy, and wonderful.
My stew was revolting.
Or let’s not forget the whiskey sauce that congealed then separated because I forgot to drain all but a few tablespoons of the beef juices out of the pan before making the gravy. As if that weren’t enough and because I was in a hurry, I then tried to shake a pinch of kosher salt directly from the container but ended up with a couple of tablespoons instead. Oh, and I entirely forgot to add the whiskey to the slop whiskey sauce.
Good times.
Just tonight I thought I’d tweak a favorite recipe at the request of Son #3. He told me that he’d “really like to have mini pot pies” sometime soon, and that he knew that they would “definitely be salubrious.” They just may have been salubrious had I adequately seasoned the sauce and the filling didn’t take it upon itself to stage a mutiny in the oven.
Don’t even get me started on the state of my oven right now. I’ve got some serious Easy-Off penance ahead of me.
Sadly, I could go on and on…
But for now I’m going to drown my sorrows in chocolate because I think if we can agree on nothing else, we can all agree on the fact that chocolate is a snake oil cure for everything.
Just keepin’ it real, Friends! 🙂
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