ira-saro diary

ponedjeljak, 03.08.2009.

Im not good with compliments.

Do you ever find yourself stumbling for words? I do that when someone gives me a compliment or praise partly bc I find that getting a compliment is harder than giving one. I seem to expect the worst and when I get something other than the worst I dont know exactly what to do with it. And then there are the times I psyche myself up for a compliment and get the opposite. Life is too damn complicated sometimes!This weekend I did a lot of cooking. I do so love to cook. In fact, I would take cooking over knitting. Anyone who knows me and knitting knows that this is a big admission. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. How can you not enjoy a holiday that centers around food? Thanksgiving for me centers around spending lavish attention and detail to food to show others how I feel about them. I spent a good deal of this weekend cooking. I could have spent a good deal more on it, but I decided not to go overboard this year. My aunt ordered a turducken. (find your own turducken here. )Here is where I admit to wanting to make a turducken for the past 3-4 years. My family is not big on change. Asking to make something slightly weird would be.. well it would not be a viable food option. Luckily for me, my aunt and her family watch PLENTY of food tv and HGTV. They saw it on TV themselves and asked me if I wanted to cook it if they ordered it. I tried not to sound too eager in my responding email. They ordered it and had it shipped so they could thaw it in their own fridge. I washed it off (we didnt need THAT many Cajun spices, and overall it was not a spicy turkey, but everyone was glad I washed off the Cajun) and stuffed it in the oven for about 6 hrs. In the last hr I took off the foil, buttered the bird(s), and stuffed one of those thermometers in that tell you the internal temp. The bird, when done, fell apart. It was that moist. It practically cut itself. Very yummy. My aunt thinks that this will be our new tradition. And no bones to carve around, since almost all of the birds are de-boned.Main course aside I decided not to go overboard on the side dishes. My uncle hates it when there is too much food and I dont like to make him angry. It is his kitchen after all! I made only the items he requested and we had plenty for everyone. I made my cornbread stuffing (I make my cornbread from this recipe. ) I made sweet potatoes, parlsey potatoes, green beans, and lima bean casserole (Judy made this as it is my uncles favorite. His family always made this casserole with limas instead of green beans) I left the butternut squash for Saturday nite dinner (butternut squash casserole is YUMMY! Ask me and Ill give you the recipe.) We had pumkin pie and apple cranberry crisp for dessert.My uncle, while I was doing the prep work for dinner came in from the barn. He had a little incident with a trespasser on the property (deer hunting season and all) and so he was in the mood to shoot the breeze. While talking to me he told me he had watched a show on food tv that showed a woman who had left her normal job to become a personal chef for people. The woman loved it and was making the same amount or more money than she had at her normal job. My uncle told me that he immediately thought about me and my cooking. That, from my uncle, is one of the nicest things he has ever said to me. His eldest son, about 2 hrs later, came in from the mid Hudson train to a house full of good food smells. His first words: It isnt really thanksgiving dinner unless you are cooking. It smells wonderful. Again, not a person who gives out compliments that often. I was really shocked. I also heard from the woman I helped last Sunday. She said that the food was so very good, and that all of it turned out perfectly. She said even the notes I gave her for brining the bird were wonderful. (And if you saw the Alton Brown brining method on Food TV you would be dubious at first too. But it is wonderful. I completely urge people to do it. They will be amazed and happy with the results.)So I had lots of compliments on my cooking. Mostly I just make it up. I take a base recipe (cornbread) and then move on from there. I make some of the same foods over and over, but it is rarely the same twice. I guess people just like the way I cook. It makes me feel good that they enjoy it. I like to look at recipes and read them for good ideas. I dont necessarily follow them. It is like a map (and boy howdy, do I love maps.) and it gives me the direction and the flavors to follow, but I get there on my own. I think Im so lucky that I have so many willing volunteers to try it out.

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