So my sister is always telling me how she has baked a concoction (her words not mine) that tasted pretty good. I believed her. I mean though my sister is single, she lived for a while with my parents before moving out on her own after graduating form grad school as did I. And you learn two things from that experience; 1) how to survive on your own (save your money and be responsible so you can be on your own) and 2) how to make more than 4 dishes once you leave, LMBO. Because my parents love their staples. They have no problem eating the same things but it will drive you crazy if you have an adventurous palate. I had to learn how to cook. My parents teach you basics, but they laugh at some of the things I desired to cook. I became way to adventurous for them (my mom’s skin crawls when she thinks of some of the things I eat, lol). All I will say is I love Andrew Zimmern’s Bizzare Foods on Travel Network. I try things just because he says you must!
After I learned how to cook, I had to learn how to buy the proper utensils to make it happen easier and to make it look presentable. These are the things I am now teaching my older sister. She definitely has the cooking adventurously thing down, but now she has to learn how to buy the right supplies to make things easier on herself and her dishes. Sometimes you have to swap out (and slowly over time if money is an issue) your dishes to higher quality ones as well or buy additional things that may help like parchment paper so you do not have to chisel your goodies off your baking sheet and nibble on them piece by piece, LOL. She said they were yummy but when you cannot take a picture and they did not look like the yummy balls you planned for and then you had to chisel and chip them to snack on them I sort of giggled because it reminded me of my earlier projects.
I was determined to eat them because regardless of how they looked, they tasted WONDERFUL. I just could not take one picture because they were surely pinterest fails in that looks department. So she asked me, how do you make your baked goodies? She asked if I just followed the recipes? I said yes at first then I thought about it and said no, actually I don’t. I always fudge it. I always either do double with a ‘bump’ (I may add an extra pinch or splash of everything –no actual measurement just literally another pinch or splash here and there until I am happy) or eyeball certain ingredients that I believe would make the recipe better. So if I want it to look like the pinterest picture and to still taste good I try to add equal parts of everything even if I’m only eyeballing it but sometimes I may add a bit more flavor of something I like just to give it a punch.
So far I guess you can call it luck but the trick it tasting your food. Get in there. Smell it and taste it while it’s going if you can. The more you cook and bake the more you will become familiar with measurements and what they look like and with how certain smells/ flavors mingle and what you feel you would like to taste and create. This will help you find or add ingredients accordingly. I mean there are times I do not have something and I will either leave it out or substitute it with somethings random and it works out perfectly and my husband never knows, LOL. I even sneak in things he swears he doesn’t eat (he’s not allergic, he just doesn’t like the taste he says). It’s hilarious. That’s the sign of a good cook.
Myasthenia Gravis 