Mostly About Food (aka- Procrastination!)
Apr. 2nd, 2007 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lls_mutantWell, I was hoping to get AIL 13 up last week. It was a longshot, but I'm a little bummed I didn't manage it. I've written like, 10 pages of the normal 20. I at least have two big things I need to do in the rest of this chapter (and I can say them cause they're totally canon)- I need the Potters to ask Sirius to be godfather, and I need the christening to happen. Turns out Chapter 13 is ending up sort of cheerful, mainly because I'm setting things up again. Plus, we're still a year out from The End, and I haven't been able to convince myself that Sirius was truly suspecting Remus of being a spy for a year, because wouldn't he have called Remus on it long before then?
Anyway. I have to put AIL up for a bit until I finish my remix, since that's due April 14. I know exactly what I want to do with my Remix- I just need to feed my muse Daughtry or something.
After I talk about food!
So, we have company (hopefully) coming for dinner in a couple of weeks- one of the Mutant Reviewers and his wife. And me, I'm dying to show off a bit and am starting to think about a menu.
Menu planning is interesting, really. I was thinking about it at lunch and realizing just how much your company dictates your menu. It's not just likes and dislikes and dietary restrictions. It's their general philosophy on food.
Take me and hubby, for example. We both like food. Our tastes are fairly similar, in terms of it's easy to find recipes and restaurants that we both like. But the difference really shows up when hubby's best friend (HBF) and his wife (Wife) visit. At the very, very beginning, I think HBF and I didn't totally get along. Over the 10 years hubby and I have been dating or married, HBF and I have finally forged a friendship. Part of it has been changes in us- he's much happier and more relaxed, especially since he met his wife (who is SO perfect for him and completely awesome), and I've relaxed, too. And also- my relationship with HBF is TOTALLY why I write Sirius and Lily initally jealous of each other but finally coming to be like brother and sister, once they both realized that James could make time for both his best friend and his wife, and more than that, needed them both. But what really clinched the friendship between HBF and me is our love for food and cooking.
Wife is a good cook. Hubby can cook. But neither of them seem to feel about it quite like HBF and I feel about it. We can sit there and discuss recipes and actually remember the ingredients. We can argue about technique, level of spiciness a dish should have, a ball whisk vs. a regular whisk, etc. Wife and hubby can easily follow our conversation and often even join in, but we definitely geek out about it more than the two of them do. So when HBF and Wife come over, I pull out all the stops. I'll cook very fancy for them, because they will totally enjoy it. And if it goes wrong, they won't give me too hard a time about ordering pizza ;)
Cooking for parents is another level of cooking. Hubby's parents are very new-food phobic. Enchiladas were new to them. They are extremely meat and potatoes. However, if I don't tell them we're going to have something they're not used to and simply plop it in front of them, odds are good they'll try it and like it (I very carefully consider my menus for them.) My parents are sort of the same. They might have actually heard of things like chicken piccata and such, but they tend to order the same thing everywhere. The difference (well, one difference) is that I cook for hubby's parents every Sunday, and my own once every two months.
However, when cooking for parents, dietary restrictions very quickly become more commonplace than when cooking for friends. My mom can't eat seeds or nuts. My stepfather hates cream sauces. My father-in-law only has so many teeth and therefore red meat is out of the question (well, not hamburger). And three out of the four of them think that mild salsa is quite spicy. While I'm not a spice queen, I always buy medium. So, parental cooking takes on a new dimension in that case.
But also, because I cook for my in-laws every week, and my parents are only here for a weekend, I'm torn between "impressive" and quick. Now, I'm very aware that some of the best dishes are the simplest. One of the best meals I ever remember eating was a bowl of noodles with a fresh tomato on it in a rural part of China. But you know what I mean.
My general rules of thumb for cooking complexity are as follows:
1.) Can I make it entirely ahead? If yes, then I can be as complicated as I please. I very much like make-ahead dishes for entertaining anyway, or at least something where I can do the prep entirely ahead and just have to heat it up or whatever (like lasagna, or a roast, or anything that is baked/roasted/broiled).
2.) If I want to go complicated, good courses to do this are appetizers and dessert. Appetizers are generally served once guests arrive, so with planning, I'm not spending lots of time in the kitchen once guests are here. Desserts- at least the ones I like- are almost always make ahead and usually involve some chilling, so they're an ideal place to go crazy because again, you're done all the work before your guests even get in their car to arrive.
3.) Is a more complicated recipe necessary? I remember one night I made manacotti from scrach, using the recipe from the Sopranos cookbook. Wow. Homemade crepes, filling, sauce, and lots of meat. It. Was. Amazing. A TON of work, but worth it. On the other hand, I have a go-to recipe for ziti that, while it requires some work, isn't very complex. You couldn't pay me to change it (well, it would depend on how much you were offering) because the recipe I use is so tasty that I can't imagine making it more complicated would be worth it.
Anyway. This is all a long-winded, procrastinating-on-writing-my-Remix way of saying that I'm happily puttering over Bon Appetit magazines debating what to make for our guests. I do know that, whatever it is, it won't involve many veggies! (He hates them.)
Okay. Before![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
musesfool whacks me, remix.
Anyway. I have to put AIL up for a bit until I finish my remix, since that's due April 14. I know exactly what I want to do with my Remix- I just need to feed my muse Daughtry or something.
After I talk about food!
So, we have company (hopefully) coming for dinner in a couple of weeks- one of the Mutant Reviewers and his wife. And me, I'm dying to show off a bit and am starting to think about a menu.
Menu planning is interesting, really. I was thinking about it at lunch and realizing just how much your company dictates your menu. It's not just likes and dislikes and dietary restrictions. It's their general philosophy on food.
Take me and hubby, for example. We both like food. Our tastes are fairly similar, in terms of it's easy to find recipes and restaurants that we both like. But the difference really shows up when hubby's best friend (HBF) and his wife (Wife) visit. At the very, very beginning, I think HBF and I didn't totally get along. Over the 10 years hubby and I have been dating or married, HBF and I have finally forged a friendship. Part of it has been changes in us- he's much happier and more relaxed, especially since he met his wife (who is SO perfect for him and completely awesome), and I've relaxed, too. And also- my relationship with HBF is TOTALLY why I write Sirius and Lily initally jealous of each other but finally coming to be like brother and sister, once they both realized that James could make time for both his best friend and his wife, and more than that, needed them both. But what really clinched the friendship between HBF and me is our love for food and cooking.
Wife is a good cook. Hubby can cook. But neither of them seem to feel about it quite like HBF and I feel about it. We can sit there and discuss recipes and actually remember the ingredients. We can argue about technique, level of spiciness a dish should have, a ball whisk vs. a regular whisk, etc. Wife and hubby can easily follow our conversation and often even join in, but we definitely geek out about it more than the two of them do. So when HBF and Wife come over, I pull out all the stops. I'll cook very fancy for them, because they will totally enjoy it. And if it goes wrong, they won't give me too hard a time about ordering pizza ;)
Cooking for parents is another level of cooking. Hubby's parents are very new-food phobic. Enchiladas were new to them. They are extremely meat and potatoes. However, if I don't tell them we're going to have something they're not used to and simply plop it in front of them, odds are good they'll try it and like it (I very carefully consider my menus for them.) My parents are sort of the same. They might have actually heard of things like chicken piccata and such, but they tend to order the same thing everywhere. The difference (well, one difference) is that I cook for hubby's parents every Sunday, and my own once every two months.
However, when cooking for parents, dietary restrictions very quickly become more commonplace than when cooking for friends. My mom can't eat seeds or nuts. My stepfather hates cream sauces. My father-in-law only has so many teeth and therefore red meat is out of the question (well, not hamburger). And three out of the four of them think that mild salsa is quite spicy. While I'm not a spice queen, I always buy medium. So, parental cooking takes on a new dimension in that case.
But also, because I cook for my in-laws every week, and my parents are only here for a weekend, I'm torn between "impressive" and quick. Now, I'm very aware that some of the best dishes are the simplest. One of the best meals I ever remember eating was a bowl of noodles with a fresh tomato on it in a rural part of China. But you know what I mean.
My general rules of thumb for cooking complexity are as follows:
1.) Can I make it entirely ahead? If yes, then I can be as complicated as I please. I very much like make-ahead dishes for entertaining anyway, or at least something where I can do the prep entirely ahead and just have to heat it up or whatever (like lasagna, or a roast, or anything that is baked/roasted/broiled).
2.) If I want to go complicated, good courses to do this are appetizers and dessert. Appetizers are generally served once guests arrive, so with planning, I'm not spending lots of time in the kitchen once guests are here. Desserts- at least the ones I like- are almost always make ahead and usually involve some chilling, so they're an ideal place to go crazy because again, you're done all the work before your guests even get in their car to arrive.
3.) Is a more complicated recipe necessary? I remember one night I made manacotti from scrach, using the recipe from the Sopranos cookbook. Wow. Homemade crepes, filling, sauce, and lots of meat. It. Was. Amazing. A TON of work, but worth it. On the other hand, I have a go-to recipe for ziti that, while it requires some work, isn't very complex. You couldn't pay me to change it (well, it would depend on how much you were offering) because the recipe I use is so tasty that I can't imagine making it more complicated would be worth it.
Anyway. This is all a long-winded, procrastinating-on-writing-my-Remix way of saying that I'm happily puttering over Bon Appetit magazines debating what to make for our guests. I do know that, whatever it is, it won't involve many veggies! (He hates them.)
Okay. Before
musesfool whacks me, remix.
