I took a moment to look at the many pieces of paper posted on my kitchen cabinet doors. Some of the papers are mementos, or the magnets holding them there are; one says, “My friends live in Oklahoma, and they sent me this magnet.” Many of the papers being pinned to the metal surface are recipes.
The collection started back in 2020, when I took the time that summer to attempt baking my own bread. The loaf didn’t look like anything artisanal, let alone artsy, but it was edible. Over the past five years, the number of papers has grown to include oatmeal raisin cookies, which is a favorite of a friend of mine. I also have some guidelines for banana bread, snickerdoodles, simple cakes and frostings.
One day while going through a box of little paper slips my mother used to keep with the zeal of a typical Depression-born parent, I found a treasure in a shrimp and rice dish long thought to have been lost, and which I have since remade.
When I follow a recipe, I make sure, first and most importantly, that it’s something I would like to prepare and eat. Next, if I have planned to prepare it, I want to have the ingredients as specified. I will hunt them down when I need to, but nearly all the recipes I keep and intend to make include what I can easily find at the Acme (or Ack-a-me, if you’re local) up the block, or one of at least three grocers within a short drive.
However, not everybody follows such a sensible protocol.
Occasionally I’ll see an article about people who should, perhaps, not seek out recipes online. These hilarious gems could be interpreted as evidence of our sociological decline or brain dysfunction, but one thing is certain: these social media posters have a lot to be grumpy about for no reason.
Take, for example, the person who posted that a recipe she made for peanut butter cookies put her husband in the emergency room because he has a nut allergy. She must have read the ingredients, prepared them, then fed them to her spouse, all the while knowing he can’t eat nuts.
Another face-palming post came from a person who, upon reading the recipe, decided to stand on a soapbox and pontificate about the presence of a few items containing sugar in the list of ingredients. She was shocked to find that people do, on occasion, prepare such things. Not her, oh no. And woe to the person who prepares this poison, as it’s sure to give one diabetes or a heart attack, and so the recipe should not appear in anything she might encounter while scrolling for recipes. Try Googling “sugar free recipes,” my friend.
Next we have the person regretting that they missed the opportunity to fiddle with chemistry in school, who looks at a list of ingredients and decides to substitute other foods, such as limes for lemons, or sour cream for heavy cream. Sometimes the swaps aren’t really from the same family; a batch of cookies turning into a sheet of one big cookie can happen when the original poster (OP) used rice flour and egg replacer for the dough. Or substituting carrots for peaches (the final product “needed more sweetness,” the OP added). And I can top that: a carrot cake in which the–ahem–chef, substituted kale because carrots are “too sweet.” The complaint often comes with the phrase, “I followed the recipe exactly except,” which means one did not follow it exactly.
How about the person who looked at “2/3 cup of sugar” and interpreted it as three entire cups of sugar. They should get together with the soapbox Karen and ban all sugar from the globe. Along with measuring devices.
Or the meat-loving person who complained that a recipe didn’t contain any meat: the name of the dish and accompanying notes specified it was vegan.
When looking at festive dishes from around the world, some people forget that a food for which a place is associated may not be in every dish. For example, a complaint about Mexican sour cream, or crema, because the preparer thought corn was involved in the recipe, even though it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the instructions.
A recipe is a plan of action, like any other. You can choose to do it or not, but when you commit, follow what the directions call for. Don’t skip. Don’t substitute. Don’t throw the recipe away or complain to the foodie website if you have not done so.
I’m not sure if it’s the inability to read or follow instructions that throws these posters off-track, or if people really think they can take detours with carefully laid-out, tested and proven instructions and still achieve success. What I do know is that I have had success with every recipe I have followed, and nobody has had to go to the ER.
My latest recipe was for limoncello, which involved three weeks of waiting for my prepared recipe to be completed. I didn’t wait one day shorter or substitute anything. In fact, the struggle to obtain the most important ingredient–the lemon zest–was the most challenging. I needed to get the yellow part off three pounds of lemons without including any pith, which would make the finished product taste a bit off. I made six festive jars for the holidays and handed them out to folks. So far nobody has given me a reason to give a one-star review.
Will I do some of the other recipes on my cabinet? Perhaps. Will I do them properly? You can count on it.
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