Messing with your recipes -- Tell your stories

[Jloreli]

Many years ago my DH decided to make meat loaf while I was at work.  I'm not sure of everything that went into it, but I do know that he put in oatmeal because we didn't have any bread.  Apparently he used alot of oatmeal.  The finished product was very heavy and dense.

The stuff was practically impossible to slice, and definitely impossible to chew.   We finally threw it out doors behind the small cottage that we were renting on the edge of the forest.  Our landlords let their dogs run loose on the property, and we figured the dogs would eat it and at least it wouldn't go to waste.

Those dogs never did eat the concoction, nor did any other scavenging creatures.  We finally just had to pick it up and put it in the trash.

I use oatmeal in my meatloaf instead of bread crumbs....equal substitution 1 cup oatmeal for 1 cup crumbs in 1.5 lbs of meat. It is denser but not Dwarf Bread dense...he must have used a ton of oatmeal!
If you decide to try it (it adds nice fiber to the meatloaf) I put all the liquid ingredients and the oats in the bowl and let them stand while I'm chopping the onion and prepping the pan etc. Then I mix up the meatloaf after the oats have soaked up some of the liquid. Yummy I promise....and not weapon grade! LOL

[Marga]

If you use block chocolate, grate it and add it in with the rest of the chocolates.  If you decide to go with chips, add them in at the end, because they are pain to grate LOL

And I forget who wanted to add peanut butter, but I tried marbling in the peanut butter cookie dough.   With a bit of work (need a more liquidy peanut butter cookie dough) it will work!  And man were they good!!! 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

So, I finally got around to making those and wow! they are sooo good, totally worth the work and mess. For nuts I used a combination of hazel nuts and macadamia's.
I did change the recipe slightly, though, but I had to. Since I don't know where to get German chocolate or couverture I replaced those by the same amounts of bitter sweet and extra dark chocolate, without adjusting the sugar or any other ingredients.

[tnpenguinbaby]

My sister-in-law is visiting this week, so I made them this morning.  She is currently on the couch, semi-comatose. She seems happy, but she won't let go of the brownies 

[doodlemor]

Many years ago my DH decided to make meat loaf while I was at work.  I'm not sure of everything that went into it, but I do know that he put in oatmeal because we didn't have any bread.  Apparently he used alot of oatmeal.  The finished product was very heavy and dense.

The stuff was practically impossible to slice, and definitely impossible to chew.   We finally threw it out doors behind the small cottage that we were renting on the edge of the forest.  Our landlords let their dogs run loose on the property, and we figured the dogs would eat it and at least it wouldn't go to waste.

Those dogs never did eat the concoction, nor did any other scavenging creatures.  We finally just had to pick it up and put it in the trash.

I use oatmeal in my meatloaf instead of bread crumbs....equal substitution 1 cup oatmeal for 1 cup crumbs in 1.5 lbs of meat. It is denser but not Dwarf Bread dense...he must have used a ton of oatmeal!
If you decide to try it (it adds nice fiber to the meatloaf) I put all the liquid ingredients and the oats in the bowl and let them stand while I'm chopping the onion and prepping the pan etc. Then I mix up the meatloaf after the oats have soaked up some of the liquid. Yummy I promise....and not weapon grade! LOL

Thanks for the tip, Jloreli!  Oatmeal is actually very nutritious.  I once had a Scots cookbook that had some interesting savory dishes with oatmeal.

Perhaps I better not tell DH, if I put oatmeal in the meatloaf.  He probably wouldn't want to eat it.

[savve]

Not so much messing with my recipes, as the danger of letting other people shop for you. I was visiting my parents some years ago, and wanted to treat them by making dinner. I wanted to make roast chicken Provence. I asked my mother to buy a whole chicken, and she did. A grilled one! I was rather dissappointed truly. Instead of my nice, juicy roast chicken, I got to serve reheated ready-made grill chicken  She meant well, it is after all much easier to cook if you do not have to actually cook, but that was not what I wanted.

Another miss happened when I was going to make lasagna for my in-laws. I needed parmesan, so asked if they would pick it up at the store. Sure, they came home with a jar of feta! Not quite interchangeable.. . Had to do the store-run myself.

[Venus193]

Some people just don't get that substitutions can't be done.

As to the chicken thing, I can relate.  In recent times I've become determined to develop new chicken recipes rather than to buy a precooked bird.

[wonderfullyanonymous]

I would be the guilty party in messing with my own recipe, but in my defense I did it accidentally

DF wanted some egg salad, and asked me to boil some eggs for him. To be nice, I decided to make it for him, and he likes how I make it.

I sit down with my eggs, mayo, spicey brown mustard, salt and pepper. I get the eggs all cut up, put the mayo in the bowl, grab the mustard turn it upside down and squeeze. It wasn't yellow it was white. Oh carp, what have I put into this. I look at the bottle only to discover that it's horseraddish sause. I get up and grab the regular mustard, to hopefully even out the taste a bit.

In the end, it didn't taste too bad, but the egg salad did have a unique taste. I won't do that again though.

[Elfmama]

Some people just don't get that substitutions can't be done.

Like DH.  We were staying with his parents for a while after DH got out of the Air Force, and his parents were scheduled to go out for the evening.  We couldn't afford to order pizza, so I asked DH to go to the store and get me the makings.  I gave him a specific list that was intended to be as inexpensive as possible: a can of tomato paste with Italian herbs, an onion, a bulb of garlic, a package of dry yeast, and some thin-sliced ham lunchmeat.  He came home with a can of diced tomatoes with onion, a cube of something that said it was yeast but didn't look like anything I'd ever seen or used, no onion, no garlic, and some sliced pepperoni.  "But there's onion in the tomatoes!"    MIL never used herbs or seasoning of any kind in her cooking, so I couldn't make up the missing herbs and garlic there. DH knew that I can't eat pepperoni or even stay in the same room with it -- it smells like raw sewage to me and it contaminates the whole pizza.     And MIL had to stick in her oar and ask why I was angry with her son over my lousy pizza.   

DH got to stay with the babies while I went back to the store to return everything and get the things that I wanted in the first place.

[Diane AKA Traska]

Some people just don't get that substitutions can't be done.

Like DH.  We were staying with his parents for a while after DH got out of the Air Force, and his parents were scheduled to go out for the evening.  We couldn't afford to order pizza, so I asked DH to go to the store and get me the makings.  I gave him a specific list that was intended to be as inexpensive as possible: a can of tomato paste with Italian herbs, an onion, a bulb of garlic, a package of dry yeast, and some thin-sliced ham lunchmeat.  He came home with a can of diced tomatoes with onion, a cube of something that said it was yeast but didn't look like anything I'd ever seen or used, no onion, no garlic, and some sliced pepperoni.  "But there's onion in the tomatoes!"    MIL never used herbs or seasoning of any kind in her cooking, so I couldn't make up the missing herbs and garlic there. DH knew that I can't eat pepperoni or even stay in the same room with it -- it smells like raw sewage to me and it contaminates the whole pizza.     And MIL had to stick in her oar and ask why I was angry with her son over my lousy pizza.   

DH got to stay with the babies while I went back to the store to return everything and get the things that I wanted in the first place.

I would have been so tempted that next time he asked for steak, make meatloaf.  "Hey it's beef, it's pretty close to the same thing."

[heathert]

Wow, I think I would've had a hard time holding my tongue with both of them. Sheesh!

[Eeep!]

One year when we were growing up our church had a Mother's Day potluck.  The idea being that the fathers were supposed to make the dishes to bring so that the mothers could relax.  My dad decided to make an old stand-by - tuna noodle casserole.    It wasn't until we were eating dinner, of course with generous portions of my dad's casserole, that my dad realized that he had forgotten to put in the tuna.  So he basically brought a casserole dish full of egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup.  Yum! 

[Diane AKA Traska]

Heh, drop in some sour cream and beef and you've got Stroganoff.