The truth is, here at home, I just make lists of wet and dry ingredients, with recipe titles at the tops. I don't instruct myself, at all. Why? It's actually fairly simple. I don't need to be told, anymore, how to cook or bake. I was raised being taught the old techniques, be they Low German, English, Low French, Dutch, Italian, or Native American. And of course, be they Julia Child (Gourmet French) or Betty Crocker :)
I'll touch on a sensitive topic here, one that other women in their 30s today who have been cooking all their lives can probably attest to: my mom was a sadist in the kitchen. In the same way that a psycho dance instructor just can't let it go if her star pupil breaks an ankle. Etc. She wasn't. Nice. But she knew a lot, and I wound up learning a lot, regarding basic techniques. However, there is more than one way to do just about everything. That's actually where she and I started parting company, really. We don't talk anymore. There actually just isn't anything left that can be said, or even trusted. It's just. Over.
That's actually been a big controversy for me - should I leave hordes of instructions for anyone who wants to learn at least a way of doing things? After all, if someone doesn't want to follow them, they can choose not to! I'm no sadist: my motto is, do what makes you happy. I just don't believe in modulism, where everything has to be done the same way all the time. Such thinking is not the mother of invention. There is the thought that, if you tell someone how to do something your way, then that's the only way they'll ever know. And, history has shown that often times, that's exactly what happens. But... For some people, they don't know any way at all, they want to learn to do at least something somehow, and they don't have any creative ideas to start with. Some people never will. I'd like to ensure that those people won't be in the dark, nor wasting tons of extra hard earned cash on microwaved dinners, even the "healthy" ones, which really aren't any healthier than anything else out there, if you read the ingredients and Nutrition Information panels, and know what you're doing.
Thus, I've left the long, drawn out, complicated instructions in the recipes posted here, in case anyone out there does need them. However, I'd like to encourage everyone who reads this blog to start coming up with your own instructions and ideas for yourselves. Even if you're not sure if it will work! Just don't spend too much money on the ingredients you'll experiment with. Start small, maybe 1 cup of flour at a time, a couple tablespoons of sugar, or whatever. Use cheap, easy ingredients first, like white flour instead of barley meal, just to get the hang of things. I promise you, the first few tries will fail. But you won't - if you keep good notes on what you did, what you wanted, what went right, and what went wrong -- and what you're planning to do next time.
See, the thing is, food isn't only an art. It's also a science, both in the physical/chemical worlds, and in the biological world. When you make food, you aren't just making something to eat. Nor even something to keep you healthy. Or, just something to appear pleasing and hopefully be somewhat tasty and satisfying. You're dawning a giant white hat worn by millions of chefs who've gone before you and dared to do something that only they could do, in their own specialized ways. And I do hope that you're making that hat fit your head, and not only trying to grow into it as it already is.
And no, I don't really wear a chef's hat. LOL. Those things look so silly!
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