December 9, 2008In the Fall, Glüwein is the most popular recipe on this site, and I must say, y'all have excellent taste. I love having a hot cup of wine in cold weather, especially at any of Germany's many outdoor markets and celebrations. You can watch Dave make Glüwein, but his technique for peeling the lemon is less than ideal. Also, he curses. A lot.
Everyone has a digital camera now. And they all seem to have more features than you can use, but the pictures are just as good (or bad) as the ones you took years ago. But, if you know what you are doing, you can take a good Christmas photo, even of something tricky, like Christmas lights.
There is a law about learning to cook: the total newcomer will invariably take the best-written recipe and turn it into a disaster, er, learning experience.
Back when I was in college, the Frugal Gourmet was introducing everyone to garlic, and Emeril was about to kick it up a notch. I loved to eat (still do), liked to cook, and loved trying new (to me) recipes. Fortunately, my boyfriend was a willing guinea pig.
Back then, ethnic cuisines were just transforming from "scary" to "gourmet." America had found that Chinese and Italian food cultures had regions with distinct flavors. We'd gone beyond chop suey and red sauce!
I decided to make spaghetti with garlic sauce, a simple recipe that called for oil and three cloves of garlic. Here's the problem, when you've only read about garlic in cookbooks, and seen it mentioned in passing on television you have no idea what a "head," "clove" or "bud" of garlic is. And when the recipe calls for three whatevers, you will choose the wrong size.
There I was, laboriously peeling and mincing three heads of garlic.
The really amazing thing is that we ate it, and thought nothing of it. It is possible they were the world's oldest, least stinky heads of garlic, but only just.
Tell me about your own disaster!
Copyright 2008 Susan J. Talbutt; all rights reserved.
Last updated December 2008