I have an funny story for you. Long but worth the read... So I'm on weekend warriors this weekend which means myself and 3 students have the privilege of serving the base by cooking/cleaning. Well yesterday I decided we'd cook Indian and started talking it up alot because I have, in fact, somewhat decent skills when it comes to Indian cuisine - there's nothing like cranking Indian music, hiding the cutlery, and getting your roll on - rolling out naan bread that is.
Anyway, the kitchen didn't have all the ingredients I needed so I figured, no worries, I'll work with what I have and where better to find something phenomenal to whip up than my good friend google? And so I decided to make 2 curries - a lentil one and a potato pumpkin one. Well, the potato pumpkin one was...I'm just trying to think of a word that could possibly contain how awful it was. As in I spit it out. Refused to swallow something so disgusting. As in I-can't-possibly-serve-this disgusting. The recipe called for alot of onions which we found strange, but we figured, well, the recipe says so, it must be so. Well, it was not so. I couldn't even taste pumpkin and potato, all I could taste was onion. We tried adding sugar, which did nothing, and then called it a write-off for the night and hoped inspiration would hit as to how to prevent this "food" (when I think of "food", I think of edible goodness, so it's quite questionable that this can be called "food") from going to waste. Anyway, we ended up having the lentil curry and pasta, but that's not of importance in this story. Step 1 to fixing this problem was obviously throwing out the abomination google referred to as a "recipe".
Step 2 to fixing this problem was getting a good night's sleep. And this morning, the mission was on. After taking some serious time to pray I dove in - rinsing onion grossness off the pumpkin and potato, processing this and other miscellaneous veggies, totally guessing on spices and vegetable stock amounts....laying hands on the pot not once but multiple times and crying a simple prayer "Please God, make this taste awesome. Somehow." It was funny cuz the other day I watched Ratatouille and as I was praying and taste testing and still not satisfied I was reminded of the scene where the garbage boy is cooking and the soup tastes terrible and then when he's not looking Remy (the little rat) goes to the soup and works a miracle and it ends up being bomb-diggity. And I was like "God please do that. Add some of your divine spices or something while I'm not looking." Anyway, after alot of prayer and a hint of spices the soup ended up delicious and something I can definitely serve.
Even though I was a bit frustrated yesterday at how disgusting it was (possibly the worst thing I've ever made), now I'm laughing really hard because honestly, this is what happens (though generally not this extreme) when I follow recipes - they never turn out.
I am born to cook without recipes - this morning was so fun just praying lots and hoping for the best. I cannot recreate what I made this morning. And I can't give you the exact recipe for it.
Any, after all this I figured I should give you all some cooking advice. To save you from what I went thru yesterday. So brace yourselves, your life is about to be changed. The one recipe you need for successful cooking....
- First, throw away the recipe you think will work. It will most likely be a huge disappointment.
- Pray. Pray. Pray some more.
- Relax.
- Throw in heaps of love, heaps of prayer, a pinch of this, a dash of that, and a handful of that.
- Lay your hands and bless your masterpiece.
- Serve it up with a smile.
I'll leave you with a quote I love:
Cooking is like love - it should be entered into with complete abandon, or not at all.
Ok, enough reading my blog. Go toss some recipes in the rubbish and create. Have a lovely day!
