(no subject)

[maradydd]

A programmer is sent to the grocery store with instructions to "buy butter and see if they have eggs. If they do, buy ten."

Returning with ten butters, the programmer says, "They had eggs."

Comments

[michiexile]

Now I'm getting tempted to try this - just to see how my wife'd react to it!

"But honey! I'm only trying to follow the recipe for once!"

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

I should consider writing up a few "critical reading" problems of that nature. From experience, of course.

[vatine]

If I claimed a litchen mess was down to me following a recipe, I am pretty sure my wife would backpedal and say "WHo are you and what have you done to vatine?" I think the last time I checked a recipe was when I needed the specifics for the pickling brine out of Prinsessornas kokbok and that was only the once (and some 4-5 years ago, now).

[michiexile]

I read recipes.

I just don't care about them for more than inspirations.

And my wife is quite annoyed by my attitude towards recipes - she wants reproducibility for my cooking, not creativity! And the fact that I can't bring myself to keeping a labcooking journal and thus may well have forgotten what I did that one time when it turned out absolutely magical annoys her constantly.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. enochsmiles and I cook the way jazz bands improvise. We'll start with a general theme ("beef, and a red-wine-based sauce"), and he'll start committing acts of saucery while I season the meat. He'll feed me dollops of sauce-in-progress as I'm busy grinding and hand-rubbing spices, and we'll shift the direction of our seasoning in response to one another's work.

Unfortunately this doesn't lend itself well to keeping notes, so we've had a lot of "that was amazing and we're never going to be able to recreate it" meals.

[michiexile]

This calls for The Story Of The Greek Meatballs.

For one of our celebrate-that-we-still-love-each-other festivities in years past, I decided on a greek-ish theme. Acquired lamb mince, lots and lots of fresh basil, garlic, tomato sauce, honey, rice, yoghurt, cucumbers, chili, ginger, and possibly some more things.

Made the lamb balls very spicy. Studded with feta cheese. The tomato sauce honey-sweetened and mild, to offset and surprise. And made the tzatziki VERY garlicy. Somehow, the ginger in the meat balls lifted this dish from "really good" to "Hey, this is the most fantastic I have ever tasted - IN MY LIFE".

So, a few months later, my beloved amerikabrev insists on having it again. And I try to recreate it. I get everything but ginger right. And it's only "really good". My wife is annoyed.

We try it over and over again, in intervals of maybe 3 months, over a few years, before the idea to add ginger surfaces. The entire process is coupled with her constantly berating my lack of journaling skills.

[vatine]

My cookbooks live in the library. I don't think anyone of them have ever been in the kitchen. Normally, all I need from them is inspiration, but for bread and pickling, I normally want the "recipe as it stands" down pat. For bread, because it may go weird and for pickling because otherwise it may go lethal.

Other than that? Nah, recipes ar ethings that happen to other people. I can, usually, recreate a previously produced dish, if (and only if) I can re-capture the mindset at the time.

[michiexile]

Bread is one thing I have grave difficulties doing By The Book. Me and thette went to a LARP a while back as bakers, build an oven and baked for a week. We prepared by baking every week for half a year, and thus gained intuition for the process of making bread.

Very helpful, that kind of intuition.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Wow, what kind of LARPs have that kind of infrastructure? I'd get back into LRP for something like that.

[vatine]

LARPs in Sweden are not the same animals as the LARPs outside Scandawegia. Not that the LARPs in Sweden are anywhere near how they used to be, back in the late 80s, early 90s. I spent four days playing a tavern handyman, cooking for 80-odd people (and baking, but I cheated and had an actual baker as a reference) in, um, summer of '93 I think.

[michiexile]

Swedish LARP culture is f*cking awesome, and the only place that even approximates it seems to be Finland.

And this one was a f*cking ambitious LARP even for Swedish standards: Kejsartemplet.

We built a CITY on a clearing in a forest. Everyone got material enough to build a 2-room house for themselves. And 2 days to do it in. The organizers got us literally a metric ton of bricks to build the oven from. And we shared courtyard with the sweet bakers and the smithy. Other groups built three-story towers, or took HUGE casks for the public bath house et.c.

And we lived the day-to-day life of the city during some of its more exciting days for a week. Neighbourhood squabbles mixed with High Politics (Oh GOD, the QUEEN has ordered baked goods!!) mixed with Elven Bastards Attacking The City mixed with ...

[vatine]

The last "large one" I was at was, IIRC, Nattens Ögon, at the time ambitiously large, with multiple settlements (tents, though) and multiple hundreds of people. It's gone larger since, though.