Remember the scene from the film "Julie & Julia" where Meryl Streep does an impersonation of a real episode of Julia Child's "The French Chef"? That scene kills me! And I am pretty sure that my Mom would agree I am a Julia Child style of cook - meaning it's a whirl wind in the kitchen. My mom on the other hand is a very "German" cook in the fact that she meticulously cleans along the way...this has caused many a war in the kitchen when I am cooking.
For example: One of the last times we were both in the kitchen I had just finished chopping some garlic, turned to throw the peel in the compost and was reaching out my hand to my knife as I was returning to the cutting board, only to have my mom in the same instant grab the knife and toss it into the sink for washing. Needless to say we died laughing!
Julia Child is a major inspiration of mine, some of my favorite quotes of hers are:
I think every woman should have a blowtorch.
Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?
How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a 'What the hell?' attitude.
I absolutely love cooking and am always tweaking recipes, adding a dash of this or that which brings me to the inspiration behind this current post. Last night around 8pm I got a craving for pasta (I blame the fact that we have all been put on a diet as of late, and dinner consister of salad). I grabbed my trusty can of Heinz tomato sauce (I refuse to use any other) and began adding: a little basil, oregano, garlic, wine and whatever else was near my finger tips. Then I got this "brilliant" idea - I love eggs! I wonder what they would taste like in tomato sauce... Why don't people do that more often? So I threw in two raw eggs and watched.. then I saw why people don't put eggs in their tomato sauce. Ekk..By this point my dad was probably wondering what was taking so long with his evening snack. I had to stealthily toss the nasty sauce, grab another can of tomato sauce and whip up something else up asap. Whew!! I don't think he even noticed...
Recipe adventures can go awry.. but failures are not going to keep me from trying new things. Have you ever had a recipe disaster?
Ps: Have you seen the DIY Recipe Book over at A Beautiful Mess? Creating a recipe book is one of the items on one of my many New York "To Do" lists and now I am super inspired!
