Chit-Chat: What's On Your Mind Today?

[Yeah No]

9 hours ago, Cloud9Shopper said:

I really do want to enjoy cooking! And for the things I’ve mastered, or crockpot recipes, I do fine. I also like to bake and tend not to fail at that as much. I just love seeing photos of good food on Pinterest and wish I could be one of those food bloggers LOL. (It will likely never happen, which I’ve accepted; doesn’t mean I don’t still fantasize about it.) I like looking at kitchen gadgets, all of that. Just that for some reason, my efforts tend to come out not so great. The comments of a food blog will have everyone raving about how great a recipe is, they’ll put it in their rotation, even their cousin’s neighbor loved it, but I just don’t get that hype. 

I haven’t thought about watching a recipe video instead but maybe that would help. 

I'm a pretty good home cook, although I had the benefit of watching my mom and grandma growing up, both of whom were excellent cooks. I didn't come out of the box a good cook, though. It took some trial and error to get where I am today. So my advice is don't put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect right away. It takes time. I would say I didn't get really good at it until my 40s. Before then I was too busy to put much time and effort into it. But I think making the same dish over and over again helps to perfect it and your overall cooking skills in general.

Otherwise, I'll also echo what everyone has said so far. Mise en place is important, especially because in cooking timing is everything and you don't want to be fumbling for a spice while your food burns on the stove. Also, I agree about watching demonstration videos, but also cooking shows like on PBS. I've learned a lot from watching them, not just when I'm cooking what they're making, but just in general. A lot of it seeps in "by osmosis", LOL. And the thing is even after all these years watching those shows I'm always learning something new. 

In addition, having the right tools for the job is important. Knowing which pan is the best one for a certain type of cooking is important. Again, that comes with trial and error. Some of this stuff I learned from my relatives but a lot of it I also learned on my own. I can still remember my mother telling me not to "crowd the pan" when I browned meat, otherwise it can come out livery and soupy. But other things like not keeping the heat/flame too high so as not to burn things, but just brown them was something I had to learn myself. Although my grandma used to complain that my mother burned the meatballs because she kept the flame too high, LOL.

[Yeah No]

9 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Someone in my husband's office brought in fake tattoo sleeves for Halloween.  They're made of sheer stretchy material, and they look surprisingly realistic. 

There's an early episode of "Big Bang Theory" in which Howard and Raj wear fake tattoo sleeves to try to pick up "chicks" at a goth club, lol.

[Calvada]

I find a lot of recipes are poorly written.  For example, step 1 is cooking the pasta,  but if you think about it, you realize the sauce won't be finished for an hour, so cooking the pasta first makes no sense.  In my 20's, on my own for the first time, I had a few disasters as I figured this out.  Also, too many recipes underestimate the prep time.  For example, they'll say 10 minutes and over 30 minutes later I'm still chopping up vegetables.  I don't think many include true prep time - for example, they just count the actual minute you're chopping the onion, not the time you spent peeling it/preparing it to be chopped.  Nor do they count the time to assemble the ingredients, pots/pans, and utensils you need.  I agree with those who have said this is important to do.  You don't want to get 30 minutes into the preparation of something to realize you're out of oregano or you forgot to put tomato paste on the grocery list.  

[Yeah No]

13 minutes ago, Calvada said:

I find a lot of recipes are poorly written.  For example, step 1 is cooking the pasta,  but if you think about it, you realize the sauce won't be finished for an hour, so cooking the pasta first makes no sense.  In my 20's, on my own for the first time, I had a few disasters as I figured this out.  Also, too many recipes underestimate the prep time.  For example, they'll say 10 minutes and over 30 minutes later I'm still chopping up vegetables.  I don't think many include true prep time - for example, they just count the actual minute you're chopping the onion, not the time you spent peeling it/preparing it to be chopped.  Nor do they count the time to assemble the ingredients, pots/pans, and utensils you need.  I agree with those who have said this is important to do.  You want to get 30 minutes into the preparation of something to realize you're out of oregano or you forgot to put tomato paste on the grocery list.  

Yes, I'll agree with that, I've seen a big increase in poorly written recipes. I like to believe I have a "nose" for a good recipe but even at that I'm finding entire steps left out, incorrect ingredient amounts, wrong timing, wrong temperature, you name it. These days if I get a recipe off the internet I make sure to look at the reviews because they often talk about any omissions or mistakes and correct them. But I'm even seeing mistakes in some magazines and cookbooks. It's important to consider the source. These days I'm enjoying NYT Cooking for recipes. It's a huge treasure trove of NYT recipes and many of them are very good. They just reminded me of Pierre Franey's turkey chili recipe so I'm making that today, although I'm leaving out the celery, lol. It gets great reviews so I'm game to try it. My mother loved Pierre Franey so it's also a nostalgia thing for me.

https://www.pierrefraney.com/recipes/poultry_and_game/turkey_chili.html

Edited 2 hours ago by Yeah No

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, PRgal said:

Transformers a thing again with boys?  I saw a few Optimus Primes walking around both at school and last night.

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Someone in my husband's office brought in fake tattoo sleeves for Halloween.  They're made of sheer stretchy material, and they look surprisingly realistic. 

I remember Howard on The Big Bang Theory wearing those to impress a goth girl…[Googles] it was 3.3 “The Gothowitz Deviation” from 2009. 

I guess anything old can become new again. 
I heard dialog on an older (90s?) rerun the other day in which the teenagers didn't know what a vinyl album was.

ETA: Oops. I hadn't let the last page load. 
I see @Yeah No thought the same.

Edited 1 hour ago by shapeshifter

[StatisticalOutlier]

I saw a little kid crossing the street in front of me, maybe about five years old, dressed as a chef.  A very simple costume--just the toque and the chef jacket, but somehow the most adorable thing I've seen in a while.

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Agree with @Bastet  definitely don’t use all those little glass bowls for prep. I put everything on one plate in little piles. 

I figure as long as I make sure I have all the ingredients and all the necessary utensils, I'm good to go.
When it comes time to measure, I do things like first measure oil in a measuring cup, and then the honey so it will roll out completely. 
I don't think they do that on cooking shows and Youtube, but I really don't cook anymore.
I'm buying pies from Wegmans to take to my daughter's for Thanksgiving.

I would make cornbread, but they want pie, and I can't do that on autopilot.

Anyway, in related news, yesterday I read in The Atlantic that I should throw out my black plastic spatulas because, in part:

Quote

…Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid.

In 2018, Turner published one of the earliest papers positing that black plastic products were likely regularly being made from recycled electronic waste.…

The full article clearly (and alarmingly) explains the what, how, and why.
Here's a free gift link to the article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-plastic-spatula-flame-retardants/680452/?gift=V9NVOkgoMYzHX6g0rLsAyX7PfNtJWJnTSxty6WlFEZ0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share