I promise you I will get to the recipes, but first I want to share a little background, so you'll get a better understanding of where I come from.
In the olden days........
My mom was a great cook when I was growing up. By today's standards, I don't know how she would be rated, but to us she was. She cooked pretty much every night of the week, and it was always homemade, good old fashioned 'real food'.
Three signature dishes come to mind, Stuffed cabbage which she learned from her Hungarian mother in law, Mary Shear, Chicken Paprikas, again from Mary, and the best spaghetti sauce on the planet, she learned from the Italian ladies in our Lackawanna, NY neighborhood. You know the neighborhoods that have garlic wafting through the air on Sunday afternoon? The backyards are connected to the one behind, and sometimes the garden takes up the entire yard.
She'd cook the sauce all day long and I was surprised to find out that it started with some sort of bone in it. I can't remember now if it was beef or pork. I'd come home from school on a spaghetti sauce day with a girlfriend, and she'd serve us some crusty bread with sauce on top, and if we were lucky, one of her divine meatballs. (don't fill up before dinner!)
As the years went by, and we kids were mostly out of the house, she made it less and less. About that time Dad decided he wanted to try cooking, and man did that ever piss her off. He made sodium laden Chinese cashew chicken, spaghetti sauce from an envelope, Shrimp Jambalaya, and Beef Burgundy. I don't know which made her angrier, the fact that he was as pleased with the spaghetti sauce from an envelope as he was with her all day sauce, or that no expense was spared for his shrimp and beef dishes. After all, she had to work with a shoestring budget and make it work.
I never really learned to cook at home, nor did I help with any meal preparation. I remember I was going to invite my high school boyfriend for breakfast, and I frantically practiced frying and turning eggs. My dog Spanky was the happy recipient of all my experimentation.(I've since learned that broken yolks happen to the best of us)
Coming of age...
It wasn't until I had my own apartment at age 18 that I really took an interest in cooking. Talk about a shoestring budget! I lived on the beach in Oxnard, CA. with my boyfriend, and we brought in truckloads of dirt to our duplex. We transformed a sandy corner lot into a vegetable garden, along with a pen of egg laying chickens. I used to take a cucumber for lunch while going to beauty school, while everyone else enjoyed authentic tostadas from the Mexican neighborhood where the school was.
That was beyond shoestring, don't you agree?
But I learned to be inventive and make things with the garden ingredients. Stuffed zucchini and lots of fresh salads. I even made tomato soup from an enormous crop of cherry tomatoes. It would have been absolutely perfect if I had known when to quit with the white pepper. Other than that, it was quite impressive. I am very careful of white pepper these days.
I once made stuffed manicotti too. I made the actual pasta shells. Not something a brand new cook should take on, but came out surprisingly, great! But, I never made them again! It was just like making crepes, which I don't do either.
So my experimenting continued, but then I moved back home with the parents for awhile. Not something I recommend after you've been in charge of your own place for a few years. (I won't get into that now).
The disco years...
That is when I started studying dance in earnest, and I stopped eating red meat because my dance teacher said that meat and sugar would kill you. I couldn't commit to giving up sugar though.....but I tried! (side note: Years later he and I went to dinner and he had beef enchiladas) I was still not eating meat! I was like, 'Whaaaat'? And he was like, "What?" Anyyyyhoooo.........
I started trying vegetarian dishes, and making bran muffins, and eating straight bran with blueberries and milk. It was like sawdust, but I didn't care! I was going to be the lean and fit dancer that I was destined to be!
Around that time I decided to make an Easter dinner for my siblings and their families while my parents were out of town. (hmm..where the heck did they go?) Anyway, I remember my brother Rick was planning to "wolf down wolf burgers" before or after the meal because he was positive it was going to suck. Don't you know he was pleasantly surprised?
Again, I moved to my own apartment and continued on with the cooking. I went through a phase where dinner consisted of cheddar cheese on Triscuits with hot sauce while standing in front of the open fridge. I was in dance class followed by dancing in the disco most nights of the week. Healthy, yet unhealthy lifestyle all at once!
The lean years...
I became quite obsessed with the whole no fat theory of good healthy cooking during the 80's and 90's. If you gave me a low fat recipe out of a magazine with 5 grams of fat for the whole recipe, I'd knock it down to 2 or 3. I was running 3 miles in the morning, aerobicizing after work, and squeezing the fat out of every morsel of food. Thinking back, yes I was rail thin, but what was I doing to my body? Not only does fat provide texture and flavor, it is a nutrient. We need it in our diet. I get that now! I wasted so much time obsessing over that crap!
Remember Susan Powter? She was all carbs and no fat. I followed that for awhile. Never mind.........
In the early 90's I threw a wrench into my spokes by attending a cooking school in L.A. for a six month crash course in basic French cooking. All that butter and cream sent me reeling. I was petrified of what it would do to my thighs because we sampled everything. My face broke out on Mother Sauce week. I had zits for days!
I will say, that most everything I learned there was valuable, and my understanding of cooking principals and techniques are much greater. But most importantly my thighs came out unscathed...but I digress....
Here I am at the cooking school on Melrose Ave.
(for those who don't know me, I'm the spunky looking brunette)
Where is she now?
Well, I moved to a part of the world where folks like their food fried and fatty. Most restaurants serve things in a basket with a side of slaw and mac salad. I am happy to say that I really don't partake in that type cuisine, but once in awhile you've got to have a wing or a Friday fish fry. You can't live in Buffalo and not do that on occasion. In all fairness, Buffalo is coming on board with some 'clean' cuisine.
I have gone back to the basics, with my own twist on things. I don't wick the fat out of my natural peanut butter anymore, but I don't cook with lard either. I cook with fresh ingredients when available, and really enjoy cooking with foods from my own garden or local farms.
I enjoy baking for other people, and I don't keep sweets in the house, but won't deprive myself of a slice of pie when berries are in season.
I've taken from my past memories, my past experience and experiments, and just do it my way.
I have a wall of cookbooks that I treasure, but rarely use. When I look for a recipe, I will find multiple recipes for the same dish and then take the elements I like from each one, close the books and do it my way. The only time I will follow a recipe exactly, is when I'm baking. If dough has to rise, or a crust has to be flaky or fluffy, you can screw it up royally if proportions are wrong. I may also follow a recipe if I'm making something I've never made in my life and I'm having company. Which by the way, is a stupid time to experiment. But that's how I roll...
There you have it. For the most part anyway. The evolution of D.R.O.O.L.
Drool on Garth........
When the vegetables were fork tender, I put a few cups at a time into the food processor. I didn't really want it smooth, so I pulsed it until it was a combo of chunky and smooth. I stirred in some fresh chopped cilantro, some salt and pepper to taste, and that was the end. I think it needed extra salt to bring out the flavors, because I used more water than broth. I also think it will taste better tomorrow.
