Food As Art

Does anyone else out there enjoy reading cookbooks in bed at night for leisure? I love everything about them. I remember when The Pioneer Woman came out with her first cookbook and I couldn’t wait to get my copy, and when it came, I had a baby and was exhausted out of my mind but would spend the entire 20 minutes I had for myself between putting him down to falling asleep from new mom exhaustion to read it. I have no business of any kind of ranch life, home-style cooking, or anything really cowgirl but in my head I was Ree out on that ranch, cooking right beside her.

I remember back in the day when I couldn’t even make rice crispy treats which has 3 entire ingredients. Yes, 3 ingredients and I totally failed them all. They were dry and as hard as a rock. A friend, God bless her soul, partook in eating one and even said as lovingly as possible “I’ll do the cooking if you do the cleaning when we share an apartment” so it is kind of funny that now I find myself whipping up everything from homemade dressings, to baking pies and cookies better than the Cheesecake Factory, and make everything from scratch pretty much. It’s a labor of love but one I can’t get enough of.

My style of cooking is to “feel” it out. As in, I’ll follow a recipe somewhat but mostly eyeball it for however I see the dish. I have to feel the components. A little this, a lot of that…you get it. I like everything primarily fresh and from scratch but can also cheat sheet it a bit at certain times. I make all my own marinara sauces, salad dressing, and desserts. I hate sandwiches. I am terrible at “boxed” cooking as in “just add water” – for some reason those recipes fail for me. I guess I like it more complex for some reason.

In college I was even worse off. I never grew up baking with my mom. She was a particular cook, just like I am now, and I had a slightly different palette anyhow but mostly just the lack of patience back then so I never got lessons. Looking back, I should have taken a few. I never would have guessed I’d grow up to wish I was a Chef at times, or a Baker, as its my second love to Design. I’d beg my mom from my dorm to send me her recipes to make something and one day this little green folder with cooking stickers on it arrived in the mail (this was pre-tech days folks, so there were no online recipes, texting, or what not…nothing was instant and everything was hand written or typed out and printed). This folder held all of my favorite dishes she made. Yet, somehow when I started to re-create her masters nothing ever worked. Granted, I was a terrible cook all around but it never even got close to the same as hers…turns out I’d have to go home for a good meal still.

My Chinese Chicken Salad – shredded chicken only

Once when I got home, after a long trek of being down south for way too long, and craving her fettuccine with chicken I asked to see her methods since my version was a soupy mess. Long story short, the confession came, that she left out a “key ingredient or two” in the recipe so “I’d have to come home to have it!”. A mothers ploy for sure! It did work though – I always had to go home to get what I craved the most and now as a mother I completely why she did this. Ha!

Pumpkin Bars

Lots of tomato recipes in our house because of the garden

Snickerdoodle-Bomb muffins…hot, full of nutmeg/cinnamon, and a dusting of sugar of course

Snake bread sticks…because why not?

My favorite thing to bake with is lemons. I make lemon cake, lemon loafs, lemon muffins, lemon tarts, lemon cookies and lemon pies. Basically, anything lemon. I also am obsessed with lemon for dressings, sauces, and marinades. There is just no way to go wrong with this citrus delight. I have planted a Meyer lemon tree when Cole was born and its 5.5 years in and is finally producing crops once a year….that is my favorite time of year as the lemon dishes are abound for a solid 3 months.

Toasty Croutons

Blueberry Muffin Crumbles

And, like Ree, I like to photograph my creations. When you work so hard to find pure perfection in a bowl, pan, or otherwise you have to take a photo of it. These days, that’s a requirement for anything I think. I finally replicated the infamous fudge brownies my mother makes, with my own twists, because I’ve found that you just can’t always make it entirely like someone else so take the basic roots of the recipe, apply the principles of the ingredients and techniques, but add your own flare. I also have perfected my own lemon pie which is almost rich, buttery texture of a cheesecake but less heavy and more creamy.

If I could bake all day, and eat it all night, that would be the glory-land…unfortunately for my thighs this is the not the reality I was blessed with. But is food not a work of art? I love taking pictures of the creations, my own or others, and find so much happiness in the butter, sugar, chocolate, salt, lemons, and really any of it. Can you blame me?