Cooking with Hubby

These yellow tulips make me think of butter. Do you know the difference between salted butter and sweet cream butter, or as some call it unsalted butter? For many generations this country has not had anything except salted butter available at stores. You had to be a farmer to get sweet cream butter. Salted butter of course is salted, but the salt is also a preservitive. If you taste sweet cream butter you may find out why most culinary cooks prefer sweet cream butter. It has a clean fresh taste, not stale and it also allows you to control the salt you put into a dish or choose to comsume.

I have been the main cook for my family since I was about 10 years old. I have done it so long I don't have to think about it too much, and I'm able to come up with a quick satisfying meal. Now, that I'm going to cooking classes with my husband, and we are cooking together I am having to gently and carefully share my knowledge without being bossy. Easier said than done.

Try telling a beginning cook, "You'll need to shiffinad these basil leaves." The statement is straight out of the recipe, if the reader doesn't understand the word you may get any kind of results. Mike my hubby, had no idea what "shiffinad" means. I told him, "You can roll up the leaves together the long way. Then with a sharp knife you slice through the leaves to make 1/8th inch threads of basil." I found demonstration is much easier than words to illustrate the definition. There is so much about recipes that I take for granted that a beginning cook may not understand. Take the words, whisk, blend, fold, whip, these all mean different things.

"When it says simmer, but do not boil, what does that mean?" Mike asked me as he read the directions for a bechamel sauce. Then he asks, "what is the difference between a bechamel sauce and a roux?" Or as he really says it in his teasing way, "rux"

"The difference is eggs. A bechamel sauce has eggs, and a roux does not. A simmer is steaming hot and no bubbles, and a boil is large rolling bubbles. The difference can make or break a recipe." I wonder is this too much information or does he really understand what I'm saying? Either way, we keep on cooking.

He pouts, "I don't like eggplant." We start out with a Mousska recipe, that calls for ground lamb, and grilled eggplant.

"Then don't use eggplant, use zucchini." That should solve that problem. But now the recipe isn't Greek, oh well. We are into creating our own recipes. Instead of lamb, we use ground beef, instead of a simple dish, we add mushrooms, and cayenne to add flavor. We still layer the ingredients and cover it with the bechamel sauce. It looks the same, but smells different and taste different. The real question is do we call it by the originating Greek name, or come up with a new one?

I thought I would include a few pictures. We went to see the tulips this month. They were beautiful. There have not been as many tulips as there has been in past years, and it has become such a tourist attraction. Most places are charging too much for parking, then will charge you to get into the feild or display. These fields in my photos were just along the road. We walked around the flowering fields of gold, rubies, and amythist in bloom leading three of our little dogs. It was a pristine day most unusual for April in Washington.
Below you will see me with the quilt I had won 4 awards for, including Presidents Choice. It is one third the size of the origninal pattern, I challenged myself to make it smaller, and it definately was a challenge. It is called the Promise for the rainbow of colors, like looking at the fields of tulips, all lined up in groups of the prism.

To see just a few more of my quilts visit my Fliker account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/94911001@N00/ The quilt below won first place, and it's called Coffee and Tea for Whitney. My daughter is a Starbuck barrista, and she likes the coffee colors. But I threw in a lot more than browns, there is a lot of color in this quilt.