RECIPES:
Recipes accumulate and I like to refer to the outstanding ones as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The first recipe I remember ever collecting happened when I was in the first grade. Mom let me enroll in a local Brownie Scout unit and I faithfully attended meetings and participated in crafts and saluting the flag. I also trotted home with a recipe for Chocolate Mayonnaise cake. The ingredients are simple; flour, sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla and Mayonnaise. No eggs. Mix, bake at 350 for 30 minutes, serve when cool, no frosting. This is a lovely moist cake with a hint of bitter chocolate. Do not store in the fridge because the temperature drop hardens and dehydrates a perfectly lovely product. And as Mom ALWAYS told us each and every time we used the recipe, DO NOT USE Miracle Whip sandwich spread unless you really want a nasty sour tasting cake. Nope.
Do not EVER allow a three quart sauce pan of eggs to boil dry. Ever. The stench from the blackened exploded eggs is incredible and lodges deep in the sinuses and rivals the stench of skunk and slaughter houses.
The ugliest recipe I ever attempted was to make sauerbraten with venison. I followed the recipe and pickled the meat with spices and vinegar. The result was a disgusting grey mess that was inedible and was immediately thrown out. Far far away.
The best instant success happened one day when my son was about two years old. I started to make him a sandwich and realized that I had no bread. It was a really long walk if I wanted to hike to the store. I looked around and found some soft shell taco shells. So I fried some bacon, sliced some tomato, shredded a bit of lettuce, fried the taco shell and schmeared on some Mayo. That was an instant success and I have made BLTT's, Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and Taco's many times in the years since. Yummy!!
A weird failure happened when I decided to make banana muffins using the recipe I found on the side of a box of Malt-O-Meal. I mashed the bananas to a smooth consistency and followed the directions. I poured the mixture onto a small cookie sheet and baked it for 30 minutes at 350. Allow to cool. Strangely enough the texture was a very flexible rubbery texture. We called them Banana Slabs but they got eaten up. In the immortal words of my Mother, FOLLOW THE RECIPE.
One time when I worked in Barrow, I purchased what I thought was ham. I found that I had purchased a pork shoulder and decided to cook it in a slow cooker. Eight hours later the meat deboned and shredded nicely. I cooked some rice, threw in some hot sauce and some canned green chilies and took it into work. Everyone in the hospital stopped into the medical records department to get a cup of Chiles Verde, Kind of. It was pretty tasty and I got to take home an empty crock pot.
One time when I was in high school my girlfriends and I decided that we would make a pizza. There was only one Pizza place in the early 60's and it was 35 miles away in Boise and they did not deliver. We had an Appian Way box of pizza mix and followed those directions. We decided to make a hamburger pizza with olives, tomato sauce, and cheese. We put it all together piled about two inches thick and put it in the oven. It cooked in about 30 minutes and we immediately scarfed it up. It is a wonder we didn't kill ourselves cooking the raw hamburger on the raw dough. Ack.
ADDENDUM TO RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES: Years ago a Jewish friend of mine, Sylvia, told me that her daughter was engaged to a Mormon boy. The couple was married in the brand spanking new Temple in Boise. A few weeks passed until I once again saw Sylvia. I teased her, "How does your daughter feel, now that she truly is a Gentile?". Which is an inside Mormon joke.
Recipes accumulate and I like to refer to the outstanding ones as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The first recipe I remember ever collecting happened when I was in the first grade. Mom let me enroll in a local Brownie Scout unit and I faithfully attended meetings and participated in crafts and saluting the flag. I also trotted home with a recipe for Chocolate Mayonnaise cake. The ingredients are simple; flour, sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla and Mayonnaise. No eggs. Mix, bake at 350 for 30 minutes, serve when cool, no frosting. This is a lovely moist cake with a hint of bitter chocolate. Do not store in the fridge because the temperature drop hardens and dehydrates a perfectly lovely product. And as Mom ALWAYS told us each and every time we used the recipe, DO NOT USE Miracle Whip sandwich spread unless you really want a nasty sour tasting cake. Nope.
Do not EVER allow a three quart sauce pan of eggs to boil dry. Ever. The stench from the blackened exploded eggs is incredible and lodges deep in the sinuses and rivals the stench of skunk and slaughter houses.
The ugliest recipe I ever attempted was to make sauerbraten with venison. I followed the recipe and pickled the meat with spices and vinegar. The result was a disgusting grey mess that was inedible and was immediately thrown out. Far far away.
The best instant success happened one day when my son was about two years old. I started to make him a sandwich and realized that I had no bread. It was a really long walk if I wanted to hike to the store. I looked around and found some soft shell taco shells. So I fried some bacon, sliced some tomato, shredded a bit of lettuce, fried the taco shell and schmeared on some Mayo. That was an instant success and I have made BLTT's, Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and Taco's many times in the years since. Yummy!!
A weird failure happened when I decided to make banana muffins using the recipe I found on the side of a box of Malt-O-Meal. I mashed the bananas to a smooth consistency and followed the directions. I poured the mixture onto a small cookie sheet and baked it for 30 minutes at 350. Allow to cool. Strangely enough the texture was a very flexible rubbery texture. We called them Banana Slabs but they got eaten up. In the immortal words of my Mother, FOLLOW THE RECIPE.
One time when I worked in Barrow, I purchased what I thought was ham. I found that I had purchased a pork shoulder and decided to cook it in a slow cooker. Eight hours later the meat deboned and shredded nicely. I cooked some rice, threw in some hot sauce and some canned green chilies and took it into work. Everyone in the hospital stopped into the medical records department to get a cup of Chiles Verde, Kind of. It was pretty tasty and I got to take home an empty crock pot.
One time when I was in high school my girlfriends and I decided that we would make a pizza. There was only one Pizza place in the early 60's and it was 35 miles away in Boise and they did not deliver. We had an Appian Way box of pizza mix and followed those directions. We decided to make a hamburger pizza with olives, tomato sauce, and cheese. We put it all together piled about two inches thick and put it in the oven. It cooked in about 30 minutes and we immediately scarfed it up. It is a wonder we didn't kill ourselves cooking the raw hamburger on the raw dough. Ack.
ADDENDUM TO RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES: Years ago a Jewish friend of mine, Sylvia, told me that her daughter was engaged to a Mormon boy. The couple was married in the brand spanking new Temple in Boise. A few weeks passed until I once again saw Sylvia. I teased her, "How does your daughter feel, now that she truly is a Gentile?". Which is an inside Mormon joke.
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