Friday, December 13, 2013

Life Lessons Month of December: Blog 2- Letters from Mom & Mimi

Hi My Sweet Girl,

I find this lesson to be particularly important during the holiday season.

Life Lessoned Learned #41:  Food brings people together.

Food preparation is not as easy as it may seem but it’s worth the effort.  Good food encourages company to stay and come back again.  It makes your house warm and smell delicious.  Don’t be afraid to try new things and practice.  However, I can save you some time with five tips I learned first-hand.     

1.     Don’t substitute summer sausage for regular sausage.  I don’t like to cook meat (nor eat much of it) so I didn’t realize that they have completely different tastes and can change the flavor of a dish in a not-so-yummy way.

2.     Be careful when you try to make a butterfly out of waffles and bananas.  You and I were making this scrumptious and beautiful creation when your Dad pointed out with quite the smirk that ours didn’t look like a butterfly.  You didn’t notice and gobbled it up!

3.     Just because you like an ingredient doesn’t mean you should put more than what the recipe asks for.  Your Dad calls my meatloaf an onion loaf (I used 3x the amount of onion).  And for a chicken bake I tried recently, I added extra cans of fire roasted tomatoes, which just made the whole casserole soggy.

4.     Definitely tear the minute rice bag to vent.  There was a terribly loud popping noise before rice exploded all over the microwave.

5.     Make sure you add water to the Kraft microwave mac n’ cheese.  The smell of burnt noodles and plastic along with some smoke stayed a few hours that afternoon.  Unfortunately, it was during a play date with some of your friends.  I can only imagine what the other mom must have thought!

6.     Have the local pizza delivery restaurant on speed dial.

Based on what I just wrote, it’s obvious that I don’t like to cook (your Aunt Samantha and Mimi should be your guides in that area).   However, I do love to bake.  And I’m sharing my passion for that with you.  You help me make all kinds of truffles (the latest being nutella flavored), chocolate covered pretzels, many varieties of cookies, and a range of different muffin types.

Kitchens are natural places for people to congregate.  Don’t ever feel like you need to spend a lot of money either.  Recipes that are made with love are the best.  Put dishes out when people come to visit.  Oh and offer hot tea, and when you are old enough, make sure you always have a bottle of wine on hand.  When bellies are full, people are happy. 

I love you my little chef!
Mom

XOXO 

1 comment:

  1. Kim I am defineitly with you on baking. But this piece was priceless. Love hearing about your blunders, we all have them its with lots of practice and take out menus that we all survive.

    ReplyDelete