Messing with your recipes -- Tell your stories

[Miss Bee]

Not a specific recipe, but - my Mom over-salts EVERYTHING.  She shakes salt on takeout pizza, cantalope, watermelon, sliced raw tomatoes, and of course, cooked food.  When she cooks, she puts LOTS of salt in her food( as well as tons of margarine), then at the table, she re-salts her own! 

That would be fine if she just kept the zealous salting to herself.  But she doesn't - or cannot, it seems. 

DH, DD, and I were visiting my parents (we don't live in the same town).  Mom made breakfast for all of us, eggs, fried individually, hash browns and biscuits (This was back before I was vegan).  Both DH and I, knowing how she is with the salt - she practically pours it on her eggs - asked her to not put salt on our fried eggs.  She said ok.  Well, when we tasted the eggs, they were obviously salted - a lot!  I decided to let it slide, but DH was unhappy about it and didn't like the eggs at all.  So, a couple mornings later, she made eggs again.  I reminded her to please leave off the salt on DH's egg and just salt mine a teensy bit.  Again, the eggs were very salty.  "Mom, you put salt on our eggs!"  She replied, "Oh, I know you asked me not to, but you NEED a little salt on eggs."  !!!  I can see if it had, indeed, been just a little, but they were too salty!  And DH had asked for no salt at all!!  Sigh. 

Of course, now I'm vegan, so I don't have to worry about it - now she just puts too much syrup and margarine in my oatmeal!    I cringe watching her cook stuff, but I tell myself the situation is temporary, so grin and bear it.  However, it really irritates me, too, that she just cannot abide by our wishes to not put salt and margarine on our (individually prepared) food!!  And no, my taking over the cooking is not possible, she'd be offended if we didn't let her cook for us!! 

To her credit, she does make all-vegan meals when I visit, and I do appreciate that. 

[Merry Mrs Martin]

  I have a stupid question? which relates to the brownies from heaven is heavy cream = heavy whipping cream  and is there a double cream/single cream US equivalent?

[figee]

I'd forgotten about this but......  Many years ago I was staying with my then BF with his family.  There were very different cultural expectatiosn about everything, and both me and the family were suffering from culture shock.  I offered to make dinner one night, using a recipe I knew like the back of my hand - a basic chicken stir fry.  While I was cooking, and people were waiting to eat, my ex-BF's mother kept on interfering.  The worst thing she did was to keep turning the heat up on both the rice (which had boiled and been drained), and then on the stir fry itself, which involved a sauce which was cooked separately then had everything combined.  Everything burnt, and I ended up asking her, in a very non-Ehell approved and testy way, why she kept on turning the heat up on everything?  She said nothing, but as soon as I turned away, did it again.  I actually caught her in the act the third time, when I asked her again.  This happened in front of the entire family, and unsurprisingly, relations between us became increasingly strained.  And dinner was awful.

That relationship didn't last.  Thankfully DH is a marvellous cook, and when things go wrong now, he's taught me that I can chuck stuff out and it doesn't really matter.  But I hated that woman (found out later she had been calling me a gold-digger and telling her son to break up with me all along.  I know I'm not Irish or Catholic, but seriously?  I supported her son by paying rent and bills for a good 6 months before we broke up.  Ugh.  Better off out of it all).

[tnpenguinbaby]

Yes heavy cream=heavy whipping cream.  I have no clue what double cream is

[figee]

  I have a stupid question? which relates to the brownies from heaven is heavy cream = heavy whipping cream  and is there a double cream/single cream US equivalent?

I'm guessing double cream or thickened cream.  I personally wouldn't use whipping cream.  But shall we both give it a go and see what happens?

[Cattitude]

Thank you tnpenguin for the brownies, YUM!!!

Question because I'm a tad confused.  Is there a 12 oz package of choc. chips missing from the ingredient list?  Because you discuss using the 12 oz of chips in the directions but I only see mention of chips in that you may use them for the 6 oz of semi sweet chocolate which I though was to be melted along with the rest of the chocolates?

Or am I totally missing something?

Thanks again!

[Miss Bee]

Oh, thought of something else - back when DH and I were just dating, I made my tuna tacos for him.  It wasn't much of a recipe, really, just a couple cans of tuna, drained, seasoned with chili powder, cumin, etc. y'know, taco seasonings and cooked in olive oil with garlic and onion.  

But a few weeks later, DH's sister and her boyfriend came to visit him, and DH made the tuna tacos - that *I* had taught him how to make, he didn't even know the classic taco spices before I told him - and told his sister and her boyfriend "Hey, I make these great tacos with tuna, you want some?"  !!  And when his sister asked him for the recipe, he told her, and not once, gave me credit for it!  I finally said, "Glad you like them, I made up the recipe and he got it from me!"  DH was all like, "Oh yeah, Bee made these first."  

[CG]

I love the ones who claim you must be leaving out a "secret ingredient."

The secret ingredient is to follow the flippin' directions!

[Merry Mrs Martin]

  I have a stupid question? which relates to the brownies from heaven is heavy cream = heavy whipping cream  and is there a double cream/single cream US equivalent?

I'm guessing double cream or thickened cream.  I personally wouldn't use whipping cream.  But shall we both give it a go and see what happens?

Whats the worst that could happen and whatever happens we can blame tnpenguinbaby 

[figee]

  I have a stupid question? which relates to the brownies from heaven is heavy cream = heavy whipping cream  and is there a double cream/single cream US equivalent?

I'm guessing double cream or thickened cream.  I personally wouldn't use whipping cream.  But shall we both give it a go and see what happens?

Whats the worst that could happen and whatever happens we can blame tnpenguinbaby 

An excellent point!   

[rain]

my older sister is the type to add things she likes to food you're cooking


ex- I don't like sourcream in my mashed potatoes - I was making a meal at my home and she added sourcream to the potatoes before I could stop her  >: I'd already told her not to (she then told me  "but sourcream makes them so gooooooodddd" with a smirk on her face (yeah - & she drug out the word good like that too  )

[TootsNYC]

I think adding/eating/excessively commenting on things when you're doing the cooking is horribly rude. 

However, if you gave someone a recipe and they decided not to follow it exactly, I don't see why that any of your business?

If they bill it as my recipe it is.

POD. However, if someone wants to take sole credit/responsibility for something revolting which is only BASED on my recipe, let them. The moment they try to pin the recipe on me, though, there will be e-hell to pay!  

I don't bother to get mad about it.

Because everyone knows that it comes out great when *I* make it--else why did she ask for the recipe, right? Everybody will assume that hers is awful because she stinks, and that I am a great cook.

[Venus193]

my older sister is the type to add things she likes to food you're cooking


ex- I don't like sourcream in my mashed potatoes - I was making a meal at my home and she added sourcream to the potatoes before I could stop her  >: I'd already told her not to (she then told me  "but sourcream makes them so gooooooodddd" with a smirk on her face (yeah - & she drug out the word good like that too  )

I admire your restraint; if someone had smirked at me like that I would have slapped her.  You act like a brat, you get treated like one.

[sparksals]

I am absolutely.horrified some people take it upon themselves to add ingredients to someone's dish - like the bottle of ketchup in the pot of chili.  Who on earth does that?  My jaw-drop-o-meter is boinging above high!

[LadyMisha]

Count me among the people who will be trying that brownie recipe as soon as I can get my hot little hands on all of the ingredients!  <drool>  They sound AMAZING!!!!

I'm the type of person who is a "dump cook".  I'll dump a little of this or that and somehow it seems to turn out pretty good   but if someone gives me a receipe, I follow it to the letter the first time I make it so I know what it is supposed to turn out like before I start tinkering with it.  Same with recipes in books.  Always to the letter the first time - then I get to have fun with it.

But like another poster in the thread said, you just don't mess with baking recipes that much (at least I don't) because there is a definite chemistry combination that has to be there for any modicum of success. 

I like to do london broil in the crock pot.  Simply put in the LB, add Lipton Onion soup mix and a couple of cups of water and let it cook all day while I'm at work.  When I get home, I'll pull the beef apart with forks and serve the lot of it over rice.  My daughter loves it   My wonderful DH, who is normally a wonderful dump cook in his own right, decided he wanted to "doctor" it up - I told him to go for it as I was heading out the door.  To this day, I don't know what he put in that pot, but the juices were *black* when I got ready to pull it apart when I got home.  Both my DD and I looked at it in total horror - even the meat was black all the way through - and tossed it.  LOL