From Oh No! to Om Nom.

Posted: March 07, 2014 by sabrina

Last night dinner was late.

And partially overcooked.

And ugly.

But, it did taste good.

Later that night, after joking about what we’d call the mess of a side-dish I had unceremoniously slopped on to our plates, my man-friend suggested I write a food blog.

“Why would I do that? I get recipes for all the food I make online.”

But he noted that although I was “following” a recipe, I messed it up and fixed it by adding in what I knew it was going to be missing. And per usual, I didn’t use the all the same spices nor the amounts listed. I got to thinking this morning that maybe I should document my cooking trials and tribulations.

A brief history:

My mom isn’t exactly a culinary artist. We were raised on a lot of hamburger helper and ready made or dried soups and stews. As far as I was concerned, veggies were a thing you had to eat but didn’t enjoy and most food came from a box.

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college. I had my own apartment and was fully stocked in kitchen hardware thanks to my grandma. I soon learned that aside from making killer cookies, I was a disaster in the kitchen. I ate a lot of salad because I didn’t know how to cook meat without it becoming dry and tough. I learned that the smell of burnt eggs makes your apartment a very unpleasant place to be (I also learned that the burnt egg smell can last for over a week). A baked potato was my lunch and dinner almost every day. Luckily, I joined a sorority and moved in to the house and had breakfast, lunch and dinner served daily.

It’s been 12 years since I graduated from college and had to start making my own food, but I really only started cooking about 3 years ago (yes, that’s 9 years of pretty much only potatoes, salad and pasta). I finally figured out why I could perfectly replicate my grandmother’s cookies, but was incapable making chicken that wasn’t dry and gross. In baking, recipes are very specific. A good baking recipe will even tell you what direction to stir and the material of mixing bowl to use if it’s important. As a molecular biologist, I know a good protocol when I see one and baking recipes are often just that. I’m hoping that through my cooking wins and losses, I can come up with some tasty protocols anyone can repeat. Maybe someday I’ll even take the time to learn and discuss the chemistry behind it all.

Posted by Sabrina at 1:26 PM

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