Questions from the audience

Hey! Guess what! It turns out there are actually several of you out there reading my blog. [Hi, Mom!] I'm always kind of stunned to discover that. I had a good question recently from one of you: I see your list of cookbooks, but which ones are your favorites? Why?

Now, if you've ever peeked at that cookbook list, you'll see why she asked. I think I'm being generous to myself when I say I have "dozens" of cookbooks. They fill an entire bookcase in my house. Since I gave up my rock collection in junior high, I've never been one to collect anything, but I think my cookbooks are teetering dangerously close to collection status.

And yet the reader is right....you can't use dozens of cookbooks every day. Which ones are the regulars?

First, a word about how I cook. I've mentioned before, I know. I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants girl when I'm in the kitchen. So my most-dogeared copies are ones that offer a broad range of recipes or info about cooking that helps me in my most favorite cooking activity: Look up 5 or 6 sample recipes, mix and match, and come up with something of my own.

How to Cook Everything: Mark Bittman's instant classic from 1998 is great. He covers every imaginable topic on basic cooking. He goes a bit into the how and why, but not so much that it would turn off a novice cook, or someone who's just looking for a nice dish for supper. Many recipes in the book offer ideas for variations. If I could only own one cookbook, it would be this one.

The New Moosewood Cookbook: I bought this long before I became a vegetarian -- the first time. [I'm now on my second turn with the herbivore life. More on that soon.] It's a great, solid cookbook for healthy, tasty food.

The Best Recipe: Cook's Illustrated books and magazines are the best teaching tools I've found for cooking. This cookbook doesn't have as many recipes as a regular book its size, because each recipe comes with a page or more of info on how they created the recipe, including trials, and errors.

Soup and Bread: This is one of several Crescent Dragonwagon cookbooks I own. I don't know if she intended for it to be a teaching book, but Dragonwagon talks a lot about how and where she gets her recipes. I've learned a lot from her.

Now honestly, the cookbook I use the most is a green 3-ring binder. I use clear plastic sleeves for pages. The notebook is stuffed to overflowing with notecards, printed emails and clippings from newspapers and magazines. I used to add recipes I wanted to try, but it's gotten so full that I'll now only allow myself to add recipes I've tried and liked.

Why I don't follow directions

So I found a recipe for a yummy frozen dessert and decided to make it for Dec. 26. It called for ladyfingers; have you tried to find ladyfingers in a grocery store in December? Let me stop you before you waste your time. So I decided to substitute something I made, instead of just buying an angel food cake or shortcakes. Silly me.

I found a recipe for a sponge cake, in a cookbook I have always loved: How to Cook Everything. This is one of those great, comprehensive cookbooks that you can count on to teach you how to cook any obscure vegetable, or to give you any number of chicken recipes when you've run out of ideas.

So I found a sponge cake recipe in this great cookbook. And maybe this was all my fault, because I chose that instead of the angel food in the cookbook, solely on the basis of the sponge cake called for five eggs instead of eight. I have a lot of cooking to do between now and Tuesday, so I don't want to run out before I can get back to a store. [I'm like Shanon; if there is a store open on Christmas Day, I certainly don't want to be shopping there.]

I followed the directions for the alternate version -- again, it's all my fault. I was really suspicious that it was going to work without separating the eggs. But I was just trying to save time. So silly.

I wish I'd taken a picture for you, but it was so depressed. The cake came out totally flat and dense. Ugh. Fortunately, for the dessert I was making, it worked out OK -- I just needed chopped up bits of cake, and since this cake still tasted fine, I could use it. But thank goodness I didn't want to serve it as a cake.

My point: much as I love them -- my collection is quite large -- cookbooks and recipes only get you so far in this world. Instinct is more important in the kitchen.

Will they ever stop?

So the NYT today reviews the new Joy of Cooking. This really is worth reading -- the review, that is. I'm not sure if the new cookbook is worth your $$ or not. You'll have to peruse the review to see.

I have the 1997 version. And it's OK. But as far as I can tell, the review has confirmed my suspicions -- what I really want is the 1975 book, and probably, the new one too.

Sigh.

They were about to kill me

My 1yo will be baptized this weekend at East End United Methodist. What a marvelous occasion. And we are so blessed that many friends and family are coming to join us for the weekend to help celebrate. What started out as a one-hour church service, of course, has morphed into a four-day extravaganza/hysteria.

• There are the children to entertain/prevent from having tantrums, of course.
• There are the relatives to feed/nuture their psychological issues.
• There's me to enjoy the festivities/try not to have a breakdown in the midst of the chaos/family fun.

Actually we are all looking forward to the time together. With relatives flung across the Eastern United States, it takes a major holiday or an event like this to bring us together. And I have an Excel spreadsheet that outlines where 30 people are going to be on Sunday and where my family is eating and sleeping the end of this week. I may not be a "planner," at least according to my sisters and mother, but I was raised by one. (Mom, this is where I'd link to your blog, if you had one.)

And I am excited about all of that. I have been thinking for several days about what to serve for different meals. You have to know this one thing about me. If company's coming, I'm not making something I've ever made before. It's like a sickness I have. (I say that about a lot of things, don't I?) But really, it's true. It's not even like I think about it consciously anymore. When I started thinking about what to make for this coming Friday night's dinner, I just naturally pulled out a cookbook I've never cracked before. That was automatically the right one. And I think I've found something that my father (really, it's better with meat in it), NYC sister (no red meat, no white grains, healthy fare only please), Nashvegas sister (must have meat!) will all enjoy. I don't have to plan around my mother or the kids. (7yo eats yogurt and chicken; how can you plan around that?....1yo eats everything, bless him.)

Saturday night for some reason had me screwed up from the start. My 7yo wanted to grill out. Fine. Yesterday my mom said, "Your dad and I will bring steaks." I thought that was a great idea. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that was only half the entree. We had a vegetarian joining us. And some kids probably wouldn't eat steak. So add hot dogs and veggie burgers. Then NYC sister calls. And I realized the other problem. NYC sister hasn't eaten red meat or hot dogs in years. Years, people. I said, "You can eat a veggie burger, right?"

NYC sister: "Well..."

I then proceeded to lose it. This did not fit on the spreadsheet. This is why spreadsheets and planning are bad. This is why I do not plan. Plans don't work out. It's better to see who's at your house at 5 p.m. and see what's in the freezer. It's worked for me up til now.

I think NYC sister is still speaking to me.

Today, I told Nashvegas sister about our conversation and explained the good news: The vegetarian is not coming. (It's not really good news, party wise. I am sad about that family's not coming. But it was simplifying dinner.) And about how I had been getting fairly irrational over the grill issues with NYC sister.

Here's the best news: Nashvegas sister left me a voice mail tonight. She and my mother have appointed themselves in charge of dinner Saturday night. Hmmm. What else can I have a panic attack about?

:) Thanks, y'all!!

The George Bush of mashed potatoes

Fool me twice, people.

I have been making mashed potatoes since I was 12 years old. Let's not do the math but suffice to say, that's plenty long enough to know how. Lately I have been looking up recipes for this very very basic dish because mine are not coming out close enough to the ones I grew up with.

Now, I'll start by saying, I already know what's wrong with the way I make them. [This is not the fool me twice part. Please be more patient.] Back where I come from, to steal a phrase, we did not make our mashed potatoes with 1% milk. And we used more butter. So my goal here is, make them so as they won't kill me, but still taste awesome. I know this is possible. I just know it.

So, I have been doing that which I NEVER do, and I have been actually FOLLOWING recipes. And both times, it has bitten me in the butt. Last time, they were so soupy, I literally made them into potato soup [7yo refused to touch] because they were unredeemable as mashed potatoes.

This time around, I knew the instant I poured the milk in that it had happened again [different recipe, same result], though a tad less soup-like. You just couldn't quite see the potatoes for all that milk. I was able to cook the milk down and return them to mashed potatoes, albeit really soupy ones. Cooking the milk out of your mashed potatoes is not where you want to be, in case you're wondering.

Next time? Screw the cookbooks. I think I'll buy some whole milk and use my regular fbtsomp* recipe.

*Fly by the seat of my pants

Party in a bag

So I love Publix. I know I have mentioned this before. I could change my blog's name to the "I love Publix" blog and I would feel completely OK with that. I discovered about three weeks ago that unbeknownst to me, at some point in the past few months, this blessed chain opened a store in Brentwood, a mere 14 miles from my house.

I haven't yet counted the grocery stores I drive past to get to the Publix (substantial number, I feel sure), but I am not feeling bad about that.

So strolling through the Publix the other day, I discovered this great little product from the Lundberg rice folks. If you haven't ponied up for Lundberg rice yet, please do. It is worth every penny. And the Lundberg Jubilee rice is so pretty that I described it to my sister as looking like "a party in a bag." At which point she says we have different understandings of the word party.

Nonetheless, I determined that we must do something special with this beautiful rice. So we found this awesome recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon's Passionate Vegetarian cookbook...combined brown rice, mushrooms, corn, carrots, onions, garlic, sundried tomatoes and her dragon salt. You bake in the oven. Wow!!! We've decided that, all due respect to CD, we'll probably unfortunately end up calling this dish "party in a bag" forever.