Saturday, March 07, 2009

Why is cooking like doing your hair?

I made a roast tonight and it just did not come out as good as I would have hoped. This is the same recipe I have used countless times. Sometimes it comes out great and other times it comes out OK at best. I am often left scratching my head and wondering how did this happen?

I much prefer baking over cooking. Baking is easy - you mix everything together, throw in in a pan, bake it for a set number of minutes and ta dah! You have something delicious and fattening that everyone is fighting over to eat. This dish will be the same each time you make it. No surprises. Baking is easy and dependable. Cooking is a different story; You have to actually know what you are doing.

When my oldest was a baby my husband and I used to eat out A LOT. When the second and then the third kids came along we tried to still go out to eat all the time. We quickly realized that this was 1) NOT FUN and 2) TOO EXPENSIVE. Yes, with 3 kids eating out everyday is just not an option. In fact, now it is a special treat. Because of this, I pretty much had to teach myself to how to cook....How to cook things besides hotdogs and mac and cheese with peas in it. Through this learning process we had one kitchen fire, several dishes that went straight from the stove/oven to the trash bin, and many things my kids just would not eat, period.

I tend to gravitate towards Crockpot recipes and casseroles because these follow the same principles as baking; you dump it all together and heat it up. If I had to do dinners with multiple dishes and sides every night I would just about have a nervous breakdown - I just cannot get the timing thing down right.

Cooking to me is like doing my hair. I can do the EXACT same thing as I did last time but I will get a totally different result. It simply never does the same thing twice. With baking if I make a mistake, it happens once, I fix it and I get consistent results from there on out. Doing the same thing with cooking each time does not guarantee that I will get the same dish. In fact a dish that I cooked last week which my kids raved over may be the same one I cook this week resulting in questions such as "What is this? What is that red stuff? Do I have to eat it? ".

What happened? I added all the ingredients. I followed the directions. I did the EXACT same thing I did last time. If someone has the secret to cooking CONSISTANCY please share.

4 comments:

annies home said...

love your comparison and thank for coming by my blog

Unknown said...

See, I don't enjoy baking but don't mind cooking. I have to have a recipe though. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

Anonymous said...

I'm glad it's not just me :)

Storm, The Psychotic Housewife said...

I'm not that great at baking, but I love to cook - especially in my crock pot! lol

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