Cooking with Gas

I still remember my biggest cooking flub.

The recipe was my mom's (for spaghetti sauce) and I was a young bride (20 years old), married to husband #1 (whom Mr. G. refers to as my practice husband.)

Anyhow, back to my embarrassing story. The recipe called for a cup of instant coffee. So, I trotted out my Taster's Choice and a measuring cup and poured out a cup of instant coffee grounds and dumped them in the pot. Hmmm. Something wasn't right. A quick phone call to my mother confirmed that I was supposed to make a cup of coffee. The sauce was ruined, I was in tears, and we probably ate out after that because I was too distraught to make anything else.

Anyone who tells you that being a good cook is simple and all you have to do is follow a recipe is full of shit. I'm sorry, but it's true. My grandmother had plenty of recipes, including one for "milk pie." The thing is, I watched her create this concoction, and she didn't measure anything.

"But Grandma, the recipe calls for a cup of milk, and you just poured a bunch in. How do you know that's a cup?"

To which she would reply, "It's just the right amount. You just put in the right amount."

Needless to say, I've never been able to duplicate her milk pie. I've come close, using a recipe I found on the internet, but nothing that really nailed it.

When I was a young lass, Home Economics was a required course. I don't even know if it's still taught in schools. That's where I learned basic cooking and baking skills, including how to measure. I also learned valuable lessons like turning off a mixer BEFORE you lift up the beaters. (Thank you, Holly, my fellow 7th grade student.)

Cooking is an art, and if you consider stick figures and finger painting art, I suppose you could say I'm a cook. Mostly, I make the same recipes I've gathered over the years, the ones that have been deemed acceptable by the Food Approval Committee (aka Mr. Ginley).

One day, I was lamenting to my husband that I'm not a very adventurous cook, that all I can do is read a recipe and put all of the necessary ingredients together. He pulled out my recipe file and pointed to the stained, wrinkled pages. Most of them had notations, adding, deleting or substituting ingredients or altering cooking time or method.

Maybe I got a little something from my grandma after all!