It's All How You Look at It

When I started weaning myself away from convenience foods, I spent a whole lot of time cooking and planning meals.  It seemed that I never had exactly the right ingredients for a dish.  Last minute grocery store trips were quite common.  In my quest to eat fresh, I was actually paralyzing myself. 

Cooking is an art.  People who don’t cook a lot will tell you a recipe is critical when preparing anything.  Following it religiously is the key to a successful dish.  After searching the web for recipes it dawned on me that I was making cooking much harder and time consuming than it really is.  Thanks to the comment section of the various recipes on line, I learned how others thought outside the box and created success after success preparing new dishes. 

Myth #1 – Everything needs to be fresh.

Mythbuster – minced garlic in a jar.  I couldn’t live without it.  It saves me oodles of time, tastes great and encourages me to cook more often.  Sure I use fresh garlic sometimes but the jar allows me to throw things together quickly.

Myth #2 – I’m out of an ingredient.  I need to run to the store.

Mythbuster –Out of Cajun spice.  Google it.  You probably have all the spices to make it.  Out of dry mustard.  Google the substitute.  Recipe calls for cans of northern beans?  Substitute any can of white beans or used dried beans in its place.

Myth #3 – My recipe won’t turn out if I don’t follow it exactly as written.

Mythbuster – Be open to making it without an ingredient and see what happens.  You may not even notice!

Myth #4 – My recipe requires heavy cream to be successful.

Mythbuster – I make plenty of soups and dishes without heavy cream. Try a dairy creamer substitute or half in half.  Experiment with other choices than heavy cream.   Fewer calories, less costly and super yummy.  It may not fit the bill 100% of the time but do try substituting this ingredient on many recipes and I’ll bet you’ll be surprised. 

Lessons learned:

•  It’s ok to substitute canned tomatoes for fresh and visa versa in many recipes.  

• Don’t get hung up on labels.  True there is a difference between potatoes if you are a purest but if not, feel free to substitute.  In general, a potato is a potato and the flavor will be there.  If you want to learn about the differences and which variety is best in certain situations, check this book out from your library.  The Great Potato Cookbook: 250 sensational recipes for the worlds favorite vegetable. 

• It’s possible to use ½ egg if you need to when cutting down recipes.  Beat up one and use half! 

Once I learned to be creative when cooking, it was much easier to deal with cooking fresh.  I have become a lot more adventurous when throwing my meals together and have evolved into a family that eats so much better with a lot less worry about the end result.  Please feel free to share any of your previous myths and mythbusters with me.  I’m all ears.