Welcome to More Is Better
With almost 40 years of cooking experience, I've decided to share my (new!) kitchen with you as I use recipes as a template, foraging through my kitchen to see what I have and what I could possibly substitute.
I grew up with a cooking mom who never decided until 5:30 at night what she felt like and then would bring recipes to life from the frozen status. In fact, when I was first married in California, I had to call her to find out how to cook a roast from a defrosted state because I only knew how to cook food from the frozen state. Also, as a newlywed I discovered that there are two ends to a turkey and the smaller one is where they store that little wax bag of guts. Unfortunately, I didn't make this discovery until halfway through the cooking time of the turkey...
I cooked as a child and teenager and one memorable dinner that I prepared with my family included instant mashed potatoes where I learned the difference between the "small t" and the "big T" when it comes to measuring out salt.
And finally, in keeping with the theme of this blog's name "More is Better," I learned in my teenage years that when baking banana bread with ripened bananas, just because you may have 3 more bananas than the recipe calls for, it does not mean you should use them all and it may result in a bread that will never EVER bake all the way through.
These days I frequently will adapt from a recipe with what I have on-hand. And that is where I will take you on my journey. We often wonder if I will ever be able to recreate a delicious meal due to the copious amount of substitutions I made off the cuff.
I will leave you with the few guidelines I like to follow in my kitchen:
I grew up with a cooking mom who never decided until 5:30 at night what she felt like and then would bring recipes to life from the frozen status. In fact, when I was first married in California, I had to call her to find out how to cook a roast from a defrosted state because I only knew how to cook food from the frozen state. Also, as a newlywed I discovered that there are two ends to a turkey and the smaller one is where they store that little wax bag of guts. Unfortunately, I didn't make this discovery until halfway through the cooking time of the turkey...
I cooked as a child and teenager and one memorable dinner that I prepared with my family included instant mashed potatoes where I learned the difference between the "small t" and the "big T" when it comes to measuring out salt.
And finally, in keeping with the theme of this blog's name "More is Better," I learned in my teenage years that when baking banana bread with ripened bananas, just because you may have 3 more bananas than the recipe calls for, it does not mean you should use them all and it may result in a bread that will never EVER bake all the way through.
These days I frequently will adapt from a recipe with what I have on-hand. And that is where I will take you on my journey. We often wonder if I will ever be able to recreate a delicious meal due to the copious amount of substitutions I made off the cuff.
I will leave you with the few guidelines I like to follow in my kitchen:
- Having the right tools makes all the difference (They don't call me PC Judy for nothing!)
- If something is going bad, find a way to use it in a recipe (Never waste!)
- There better not be any leftovers (But my husband lucks out for his lunch the next day)
- Measuring? Who needs measuring? (Just eyeball it!)
- More is DEFINITELY better! (And so we begin...)
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