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I wish I was an extraordinary cook. I wish I had the crazy skills (and photography equipment) to be like the amazing food bloggers on the internet. Unfortunately, I have neither. But, what I do have is the ability to follow a recipe.
You see, I tried it. I attempted to just cook. Simple, right? Maybe for you, but for this preacher's wife it wasn't happening. Shortly after we were married my beloved referred to my cooking as "Granny Clampett-ish."
(Sad, but true.)
He is a dear and would ingest anything I created and would never say a word (except for the time I turned the beef stroganoff pink), but he was not loving dinner time with the new wife. Oh, and it wasn't just The Preacher who was slowly eyeballing my dishes. Don't forget, I am the wife of a preacher. That means covered dish dinners and women's meetings and Sunday school parties and Wednesday night suppers, etc. There would be plenty of times I needed a meal and I needed to know how to produce something stellar (and cheap and easy).
Enter Food Network. Until I was married I was a TLC junkie with a healthy love for HGTV. I cared little about food. I ate when I was occasionally hungry and otherwise a coca-cola did the trick. But, now I was fighting for love. Not that I thought The Preacher was going to leave me if I'd never learned to cook, but I needed to give him a big fat reason to stay put. I began to scour the Food Network for ideas. I poured through my Southern Living magazines. Paula Deen became my new best friend (I am not sure she ever knew that though). Slowly, but surely, I began to put together a few recipes that I could make, and make rather well. I became braver and braver. Often my bravery led to total and complete disaster (think in-laws over for pork chops and a little too much vinegar), but occasionally I hit on a winner
Fast forward seven years. Now I can hold my own in the kitchen. I know what to do with a slotted spoon and a spatula, a pie pan and a pastry blender. I bake fabulous cookies and my Italian cream cake is to die for. But, can I take credit for any of these creations? Nah. They all came from someone else's kitchen (or test kitchen as the case may be). I simply learned the fine art of following a recipe and gained the sense to know when I can fudge and play with a plan and when I have to stick to it. At recipe reading I am flawless!
My point? I think those of us who can follow a recipe are under-rated. Yes, there all fabulous food bloggers all over the internet and amazing television personalities who can cook and magazines galore, but who are they writing recipes for? They write for us. They write and photograph for those of us in Podunk, USA, who have families to feed every night and need some inspiration - not to mention a little help impressing the loves of our lives.
So, here's to us! The unsung hero's of the foodie movement. Without us, the inventive geniuses of the kitchen would have few to test and rate their haute cuisine. And who knows, maybe a creative substitution here or there might make one of us the next brilliant food blogger.
Because I don't know any other way to be,
Meg
Psalm 147:11
