who's cookin'?

In an ideal world, I'd have the time and money to attend a culinary institute in Italy just for the fun of it. In reality, I'm not a chef to anyone outside of my little home. But around here, Mr. Improv deemed me a chef years ago, and it stuck (and I still thank the good Lord for a husband who isn't picky). He's taught our oldest girl, Pink (5), that the kitchen is called Jenny's Diner, and talks about anything mama makes as exquisite and creative. Clearly, if you've looked through this blog a bit, you can see he has a knack for over-exaggeration. But I won't hold it against him.

Pink has been cooking with me since she could sit on the counter, and by the time she was 4 she was granted the title of "Sous Chef" with the understanding that the Sous Chef is second in command, with plenty of freedom & responsibility, but always follows any orders that come from the Chef de cuisine. And Lizzie (2) joins in the fun now, making it a family affair. Soon enough, Mia (1) will be immersed, but we're working on teaching her to walk first.

I've loved kitchen creations for as long as I can remember, and have been experimenting regularly since college when I learned how to make authentic enchilada sauce from my Mexican roommate and researched the finer points of Hollandaise sauce (pre-Google: how ever did I manage?!). But try as I may, I can't make myself follow a cooking recipe to save my life, even altering baked goods. My kitchen preference is to do whatever I feel like, make whatever I'm in the mood to eat, and throw things together in whatever way I can. In that way, I've been a student of food science and creativity for years now, learning about how food goes together and what to expect in terms of taste, texture, timing, and the final product.

The recipes you'll find here are the result of my complete inability to follow a recipe exactly, and my panic-driven intuitive creations that result from not having my act together at dinner time my natural spontaneity. They are all designed around the idea that really, most dishes we call "dinner" can be faked or altered because food follows a short list of absolute truths, like if you add all your starch to your sauce at once, no amount of whisking will make the lumps go away.

So enjoy the recipes, if you're a recipe follower. Or change them if you're anything like me. Most of all, don't hold me to ever making them exactly the same again, because well, that would go directly against the theme of the blog.

Oh, and I'm a grammar geek. But though I typed commas in all the right places, and can in fact see them in the little editing section in which I'm currently typing, the powers that be seem to dislike commas, or dislike me, or both, for those powers have prevented my commas from appearing on the blog itself. Sigh. I wish I could be smarter than my computer. I outsmarted my computer! Kinda. Change the font, get the commas back. Or something like that. Anyway, I still wish I could be smarter than my computer, but at least I can be grammatically correct. I'll take it.