On my initial blog, The Flatpick Post, at
http://flatpickpost.blogspot.com/ my profile describes me as "painter, picker, grinner, sometimes collector and sometimes purveyor of fine, fretted instruments." However, there is something else I am deeply passionate about: I love to cook.
It all began a couple of years ago when my wife Sue challenged me to share in the cooking duties; that is, to alternate: She would cook dinner one night, I would take the next night. We both work full time jobs, so it is certainly appropriate that I assist in the kitchen duties. Yet I hesitated because I had always been a klutz in the kitchen. In fact, there had been a long-standing joke about my old family recipe for baked beans. Whenever we would go to a group picnic or pot luck dinner, I would open a couple of cans of Bush's® baked beans, take them in a deep dish or crockpot and tell everyone that these beans are from an old family recipe. I did not mention that it was the Bush family, not mine.
However, I took my wife up on her challenge and decided if I was going to do this I'd go all the way and do some real cooking. I spent several weeks studying cookbooks and recipes on the internet and watched some of the great ones on the cooking channel: Emeril, Bobby Flay, and Rachael Ray. I thought,
I can do this. I began to really get caught up with this whole thing and one day found myself daydreaming about how I'd love to be one of these great cooks flitting about the kitchen, enthusiastically preparing a fabulous presentation. It seemed to me that it must be very rewarding to be able to not only produce exceptional cuisine but to share with others how you do it.
I determined, from that day forward, that while I would continue to receive education and inspiration from many resources, every recipe I would prepare on the nights of my kitchen duty would be my own. I would gather a number of recipes for any given dish and draw from each one the ingredients and methods that I thought would work best, adding my own ideas here and there. I would keep meticulous records of each concoction, recording them in my word processor. The idea of experimentation intrigued me.
The upshot is that there have been some recipes that passed with flying colors on the first attempt. There have also been some real disasters. Sometimes the second or third attempt at a dish has produced favorable results. Sometimes I've decided the best thing to do is to cut my losses and move on. I now have thirty-nine recipes in my word processor. Most of them have developed to the level of quality I desire. In the past two years I have learned many things about cooking in the kitchen, and with help from my son Nathan, about grilling in the back yard. My goal for the not-too-distant future is to publish my own cookbook, directed especially toward people who are how I was--people who are basically non-cookers.
I still have much to learn, but I now find myself with a great enthusiasm for cooking and a passion for culinary excellence. As this blog develops, I look forward to sharing with you some of the things that excite me--and I look forward to being blessed by those who will share their recipes, their ideas, and their love of cooking.
You may have noticed that in the bratwurst recipe I posted recently, one of the ingredients is beer. I use beer in a number of recipes because it adds a unique layer of flavor that is often complimentary to the other flavors--and it also helps to blend the other ingredients in a way that enahnces the taste of each layer. Award winning brewmaster Mike Snyder has written an excellent eBook offering 36 recipes, all using beer. Breakfast recipes, soup & chili recipes, dinner recipes, bread & sides, desserts... It's all there! Everything from baked french toast to cream of potato soup to turkey stir-fry to banana pudding. While specifying the quantity of beer in each recipe, Mike has purposely excluded brand names and styles of beer, allowing the cook complete flexibility to use his or her own flavor variations and to experiment. Purchase this eBook for only $4.95 from the following link:
