When Beloved asks for ingredients for Family Recipe, buy ingredients for Family Recipe.

Do not start adjusting, do not get involved in cooking, it is not about a professional using Family Recipe as inspiration.

It is about Beloved making a Taste of Childhood.

Yep And never say that's not how my Family made it.

Edit to say it the way she made it with a Smile

The lady who was the practice manager at a law firm I worked at had a husband who was a very good cook, and in fact, did most of the cooking at their house. He crossed the line though when he messed with her Thanksgiving dressing. She told him if he did that one more time she was taking his credit cards and going shopping and that he would be very sorry.

Smile and nod, gentlemen.

Smile and nod.

Do these jeans make my butt look big?

Que up the frying pan.

No. Yo big ol' butt makes your butt look bi---

--> klang! ooooowwwm <--

Thankfully I chose wisely and have a very easy to get along with wife. For most things if I go on the shopping mission, can get away with substitutes or brand changes for ingredients with no issues at all. For a very few select things, however she will specify a particular brand or type - but she makes it very clear this is what she needs.

I thought I had done a good job raising my son. I discovered I had failed when his wife made his favorite meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn, and he told her it wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
I thought I had done a good job raising my son. I discovered I had failed when his wife made his favorite meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn, and he told her it wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

I imagine he'll only make that mistake once.

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
I thought I had done a good job raising my son. I discovered I had failed when his wife made his favorite meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn, and he told her it wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

I would have been wearing meatloaf, mashed ‘taters and corn on my head.

My first wife was a childish train wreck. Six long years of her shit.
Luckily, I learned a lot from that.

Now? Got a good old-fashioned country girl, a dairy farmers daughter.

I showed her a Mime once of a woman dressed only in a T-shirt and panties, standing at a stove cooking… The caption was… “Never let your man leave home hungry or horny!”

Her simple comment… “Yep”

45 years and counting…


Wife’s sister was at odds with her husband one time and related that she had “cut him off” (yea from sex)

My wifes only advice to her sister…

“Well… you will never keep a man if you make him stay on his side of the bed”


I kinda like them country girl wisdoms!

To clarify, my wife is wonderful - she didn’t yell/get angry/etc, I could just “tell” it upset her that I adjusted it.

quote:

Originally posted by amals:

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
I thought I had done a good job raising my son. I discovered I had failed when his wife made his favorite meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn, and he told her it wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

I imagine he'll only make that mistake once.

I imagine he’ll be at your house for dinner tonight.

Mine's Italian. Mean. Still scares me a little. Pretty sure she carries a knife. 40 years

My wife's aunt had a family recipe cookbook made and gave one to every family member.
My sister has been trying to duplicate some of our grandmothers' recipes for forty years and does a great job but not quite the same.

My son in law would say, "Just take the L bro'.."

Supermarkets change and I'm finding its getting harder and harder to make family recipes verbatim (e.g. 32 ounce is now 24 ounce at store). If possible, learn how to make it verbatim the family way. After that, there might be an opportunity to tweak.

When my Mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer she handwrote for me a family recipe book that contains her recipes, maternal grandmother's recipes, and paternal grandmother's recipes. Mom passed years ago, and my Dad enjoys when I cook Mom's or paternal grandmother's recipes for the holidays. It's generated two relevant things as far as tweaking:

Paternal grandmother's baked beans recipe. Recipe is a loose term in this case as it was add this ingredient until this color change achieved and it didn't include things such as whether or not to drain the beans. On top of that, the supermarket changed and they no longer sold beans in the jar like the recipe called for so I had to substitute 2 cans. It probably took 7 or 8 times until I got it right with taste and found that Grandma's texture was achieved by 1st can used as-is and the 2nd can rinsed and drained. Dad is reasonable so appreciated the effort to figure it out and was OK with canned substitution.

Paternal grandmother's peanut butter pie recipe. Grandma invented this a teen during the Great Depression and it was on a graham cracker crust. I made it verbatim for years both at dinners Dad attended as well as dinners when Dad was not there. I had the idea that an Oreo crust would be better than graham cracker crust so I tried it at a dinner Dad wasn't attending. It was better so when I spoke with Dad on phone I mentioned it and he thought it sounded good too. I made the Oreo crust at the next holiday with Dad, Dad liked it better, and it's now the go to crust for peanut butter pie.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tatortodd,

I hear ya!

As a former chef, it's sometimes very hard with a "civilian" like my wife who is a very good cook but everything she does is different than how a chef would do it and I have to bite my tongue a lot or just let her do her thing.

In a professional kitchen the concept of mis en place and "clean as you go" are drilled into you and something you just do instinctively. This does not come naturally to her and we having a running joke about when she cooks this is what it looks like afterwards:

quote:

Originally posted by irreverent:

quote:

Originally posted by amals:

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
I thought I had done a good job raising my son. I discovered I had failed when his wife made his favorite meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn, and he told her it wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

I imagine he'll only make that mistake once.

I imagine he’ll be at your house for dinner tonight.

This was a few years back when they were first married and to my DIL's credit she
A) most likely got paid in full but it was kept between them and

B) asked my wife to show her how she makes meatloaf.

I don't think she made a bad meatloaf, it just wasn’t the style he was used to. I came home a couple times to find my wife and DIL in the kitchen working on dinner so I got to enjoy him being a dumbass. He did learn from the experience.

I have found that cooking in her kitchen is very dangerous, even if I am a better cook.