Your Mom's Home-cooking

As I was throwing together a meatloaf based on my Mom's vague instructions and ingredient amounts, I was composing this in my head to a male audience, so I will go ahead and write it that way. Women, feel free to read it as well.

Before you annoy your wife or girlfriend with comments about how a certain dish isn't like your mother makes it, even though she says she's following the recipe your mother gave her, here's some things you should know. Despite what some people try and say, cooking is not a science; yeah, it may kind of be when doing a fancy, highfalutin recipe, but not so when doing a recipe that is a staple, an old friend. When your mom is making her meatloaf, her spaghetti sauce, or her apple pie it is more of an art-form.

Tonight I asked my mom for her meatloaf recipe and how to make it and she proceeded to give me all the ingredients without any measurements. As she was telling me how to make it and how many eggs to use, all she said was, “If you have enough meat, use two eggs, but you don't want to use too many eggs, then it will be “eggy.” About the tomato sauce she stated, “Just put enough in to make the meat a nice pink color.” Now, I could have chosen to be frustrated with these instructions, but I cook fairly often, so I understand the vagueness and hinting at certain attributes.

When I make my flavored chocolate cupcakes of various flavors, I actually use a “lemon-lovers pound-cake” recipe as my base. If someone were to ask me for the recipe, well, I would have no idea exactly how much cocoa to tell them to use or the amount of coffee, Andes mints, mint flavoring, or whatever else I decide to use that time. If I make chili, I don't use the same amount of garlic, chili powder, or even the same amount of beans each time, but in the end it always taste like my chili. Why? Because I made it.

When my Mom makes meatloaf she adds tomato sauce until it looks right and crackers until it feels right. I add chili powder to my chili until it looks dark enough and tastes how I think it should taste. Cooking the long-used recipes is, like I said, similar to because able to recognize an old friend. You don't know exactly how tall they are or their weight to the once. Instead you know them by how they look, smell, feel, and taste. Hmm, maybe a comparison to a long-time lover would be more accurate.

So your mom may have given your wife or girlfriend the “recipe” or your dad may have told you how to make his secret barbecue sauce; but, most likely, objectively they don't know the exact amounts of all the ingredients or how long to stir it, mix it, or mold it, because how can you ever fully describe an old friend? So suck it up, let your wife make the recipe her own, or try it out for yourself and make it your own (one of the reasons I enjoy cooking is because I know I'll like what I make). And maybe one day, though it's not exactly the same, you'll discover the recipe is an old friend of yours as well.

Note: in light of my last post, with all this talking about old friends tied in with recipes, I feel I should say, please do not eat any old friends. I do not endorse that. Further note: I make it sound like the wives and girlfriends do most of the cooking, I have always cooked, so I know that is not always the case. I am sorry if I seemed to be promoting the stereotype of the woman in the kitchen. I strongly think men should be there as well, especially those who always gripe about how their love's cooking is not like their mother's. I have decided that when/if I get married, when I want something similar to my Mother's and different than my wife normally does, I will simply volunteer to cook, instead of making a big deal of it...and plan to cook lots of other times besides.