Don't be afraid to make a pie

Don't be afraid to make a pie



I love pie. Just the word PIE sounds like it is full of cozy and satisfying promise. And do you know what is even better than regular pie? A pie that you made with your very own hands. So many people are afraid of making pie, but I promise you, if you keep a few techniques and tips in mind, it is not hard! And since it is now summer, the perfect time to make a fantastic fruit pie, I am here to tell you don't be afraid to make a pie! You can make something totally delicious and impressive, and everyone will be amazed that you made it all yourself, crust and all.

First, let's talk about the crust. Before talking about specific recipes, here are a few notes and techniques that you need to keep in mind before making any pie dough.

1. Give yourself enough time: making a pie crust isn't the kind of thing that you want to rush through. Actually putting together the dough takes only a little while, and just a few minutes if you have a food processor, but it is essential to give the dough time to rest and chill in the fridge after you put it together and before you try to do anything with it. If you want to test this out, try taking a little piece of your dough and try rolling it out immediately after it all comes together, and then try doing it after it has an hour in the fridge: you'll see a big difference.

2. Keep everything as cold as possible!: Start with cold (ideally frozen) butter and whatever other fat you're using, use ice water, and if you can, pop your flour in the freezer for a little while before putting everything together. You want the fat to melt in the oven (that's what makes everything nice and flaky), not before.

3. Parchment paper is your friend: If you lay down a sheet of parchment paper on top of whatever surface you're rolling on, you don't have to worry as much about the dough sticking, and you have to use less flour (though you should still use a little).

Second, let's talking about the filling. Peach pie is awesome, as is apple, but the easiest thing to start off with, especially at this time of year, is a berry pie. You can go with all of one berry (blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, olallieberry, etc.) or you could do a mixed berry pie. The general recipe for any good berry pie is about 6 cups of berries to 1/2 cup of sugar (give or take a little sugar depending on the sweetness of the berries), the juice of half a lemon, and three tablespoons of cornstarch. Combine the berries, sugar, and lemon juice in a bowl, toss gently and let it all sit for about ten minutes. Then add in the cornstarch, toss again, and add to the pie pan. Dot the berries with butter (about 2 tablespoons, cut into little pieces) Cover up the pie and bake! For specific baking instructions (or if you're using a purchased pie dough), jump to instruction 4. below.

Now for pie dough recipes!

A traditional all butter pie crust is usually the most recommended (and here's a standard recipe for one). But honestly, I find all butter crusts to be a pain in the ass to work with; they stick to everything, they're really hard to roll out, and they just end up getting me frustrated. Don't get me wrong, I love the taste of butter (oh, I really do), but for pie crusts, the all butter dough is enough to turn a virgin pie baker away from ever making a pie again.

But I do have a perfect pie dough recipe: it comes together in a few minutes, it's easy for even a brand new baker, it rolls out like you're demonstrating on the Martha Stewart show, and it tastes great and goes with just about every kind of fruit pie you can think of. It uses a combination of butter and cream cheese, and it's fantastic. You can also use more or less this same recipe but substitute lard for the cream cheese, but that depends how into lard you are. Thanks go to Rose Levy Beranbaum for this, and an adapted version of her recipe is below (from the Pie and Pastry Bible). However, mostly now when I make it, I use her same method, but the general measurements from Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, with about two thirds butter and one third cream cheese. Ratio was a book all about measuring by weight and the right ratios of cooking: he says that a pie dough is a 3/2/1 ratio, so three parts flour, two parts fat, and one part water (use your kitchen scale for this if you have one); you generally need a little less water than that, though, so for a 1 crust 9 inch pie it's about 210 grams flour, 140 grams fat (90 butter, 50 cream cheese), and 60 grams water. Double that for a double crust pie; it usually gives me a little dough leftover, but dough leftover is better than not enough!

Flaky Cream Cheese Pie Crust

For a 9 inch crust double crust pie
12 tablespoons or 6 ounces butter
2 cups or 10 oz flour
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoons baking powder
4.5 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons ice water
1 tablespoons cider vinegar

1. Cut the butter into small cubes, wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it until frozen solid, at least 30 minutes. Place the flour, salt, and baking powder in a recloseable gallon size freezer bag and freeze for at least 30 minutes. Place the flour mixture in a food processor with the metal blade and process for a few seconds to combine. Set the bag aside. If you don't have a food processor, shake the closed bag with the flour mixture in it, or you can pour it into a bowl and toss with your fingers.

2. Cut the cream cheese into a few pieces and add it to the flour. In the food processor, process for about 20 seconds or until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the frozen butter cubes and pulse until none of the butter is larger than the size of a pea. Remove the cover and add the water and vinegar. Pulse until most of the butter the size of small peas. At this point you can either process it for a few more seconds until it all holds together, or put about half of it into a bowl, knead with your hands until it forms a ball, put that ball to the side and do the rest with the rest of the dough. Then wrap each ball with plastic wrap, flatten into two discs and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes.

3. If you don't have a food processor, whisk the dry ingredients to combine, then add the cream cheese and rub between your fingers to blend into the flour. Then spoon it with the cold butter into the freezer bag, and close it, expelling any air. Use a rolling pin to flatten the butter into thin flakes. Then put it back into a bowl and sprinkle with the water and vinegar, and toss lightly with a rubber spatula, and do the kneading from above. This dough also freezes really well, so at this point you can wrap it well, and put it in the freezer, and just pull it out and defrost in the fridge whenever you want to make pie.

4. After the dough has rested, preheat your oven to 400, roll out each half to about a 12 inch circle (you want plenty of room around the edges). To transfer the circle into your pie pan, fold it gently into fourths, then put the point of the fold in the middle of the pan, and gently unfold and press it down. At this point, cover the pan and put it back in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Then add your filling, cover up the pie with the rolled out dough of your other disc of dough, press the edges of the pie together with your fingers, cut a few slashes in the top crust to let the hot air come out, and refrigerate again for about 30 minutes. You can also do pretty things with lattice crusts at this point, which I love.

5. Then put it in your hot oven (with aluminum foil underneath to catch any drips) and bake for 25 minutes, then turn down the heat to 350 F and bake for another 40 minutes. If your crust starts getting too brown on the edges, put aluminum foil around the top to keep it from browning more. Then let it cool, and you have a beautiful pie!



You should also follow along on the Good Food blog this summer, as Evan Kleiman does the Pie A Day project again. I got a ton of ideas from all of the pies that she made last summer.

The pictures are from a rhubarb pie that I made last summer. Yay for pie!

Don't Be Afraid of Baking a Cake from Scratch

Second in an occasional series to lessen your fear of cooking

I know so many people who are terrified of baking anything from scratch, and only make cake from mixes, or biscuits from the Bisquick box or from a can. But I am here to tell you not to be afraid! Really, I promise, baking a cake from scratch is not that much more complicated or difficult than using a mix, and they taste so great. That sense of accomplishment, and the oohs and ahhs and mmmmms that you'll get when you bring that beautiful cake to the table and people dig in are enough to conquer those fears. Most cake mix recipes have you add an egg or two and some oil to the dry mixture, right? Well there are some simple cake recipes that are almost just as easy -- the dry mixture might consist of flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt, but that takes just a few minutes to get together, and you are often just adding eggs and oil to that, and sometimes another liquid. I swear, that can be it, and then you get to brag to people about your cake baking skills and listen to them rave about how good it is.

Here are a few quick things to remember when baking a cake from scratch:

1. As with the egg whites, it helps to have all of your ingredients at room temperature when you start out. If they're not at room temperature, and you're in a hurry, don't try to warm them up too fast (like in the microwave). For eggs, just put them (uncracked) in a bowl of warm water while you're getting your other ingredients together. For butter, cutting it up into small pieces will help it to soften in just a few minutes.
2. Pay attention to what the recipe says about the size of the pan, and how many pans to use. Once when I was twelve, I was making our favorite family recipe chocolate cake: it called for three cake pans, but I could only find two, so all of the batter was divided between two pans, and not three. When I checked on the cake midway through the baking and noticed that there was a volcano of batter streaming out of the pans onto the oven floor, I realized my mistake. Don't be like me!
3. Don't get baking powder and baking soda confused!
4. Don't overmix the cake; when mixing, you want the ingredients to be just combined enough so that no individual ingredient is distinguishable, but stop as soon as you get to that point.
5. To get even and flat cake layers (helpful when you want to frost the cake), after you fill the pans, rap each pan on the counter firmly -- that will release any air bubbles, and will keep the cake from having a big dome top. You can also buy some of these cake strips (available at most cooking stores and stores where they have cake decorating supplies), and they are like magic for an evenly baked cake for a nice flat top.
6. Parchment paper is your friend! Let me tell you, it is so much easier to do almost anything related to baking when you use parchment paper. Just put a little butter in the cake pans to start, then cut a circle of the parchment bigger than you think that you'll need. Fold the circle into a quarter, and put the point of the circle in the middle of the pan, and then fold back the circle where you need to trim the edge off. Unfold, and put the paper circle in the middle, and put a little more oil or butter on top to make it lay flat. Your cakes will be forever easier to take out of the pan.
7. Buttermilk makes for a great cake, so if you see a recipe that has that as an ingredient, let your eyes perk up a little. You can make a buttermilk substitute in a pinch by adding vinegar or lemon juice to milk, just a tablespoon per cup, and let it sit for about five minutes.
   
8. Frosting the cake: It is much much easier to frost a cake once it has cooled all the way, and it is even easier if you do a light layer of frosting all over the cake, then pop it into the fridge to let it chill, and then finish the frosting job (this is called a crumb coat). But honestly, if you don't have time for that, your cake is going to taste just as good even if it looks a little more, let's call it "rustic" shall we? Just make sure it cools, because otherwise you'll pull off chunks of cake as you try to frost, and that's no fun.

But honestly, even if you forget most of these things, you can still turn out a good homemade cake. The second and third points are the most important of that list; if you use straight from the fridge ingredients, have no parchment paper, stir up the cake willy-nilly, and you don't have time to cool it all the way before frosting it, it'll still taste good (for the latter instance, just use a glaze, it's much more forgiving, or even better, make a cake that you can just dust powdered sugar over and call it a day).

Here are a few good recipes for easy, practically no fail cakes:

Double Chocolate Cake

This is based on the double chocolate layer cake from Epicurious, but I've made a few changes to the recipe that make it a little easier, the biggest of which is to convert it from 10 inch cake pans (which most people don't readily have on hand) to 8 inch cake pans.

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces semi sweet or bittersweet chocolate
• 1 cup hot brewed coffee (if you have no coffee on hand, just use hot water)
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
• 1 1/3 teaspoons baking soda
• 2/3 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoons salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300°F, grease pans, and line with parchment as discussed above.

Finely chop chocolate and in a bowl combine with hot coffee or water. Let mixture stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Into a large bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl with an electric mixer beat eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored: about 3 minutes with a standing mixer, 5 minutes with a hand-held mixer, or 8 by hand. Slowly add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well. Add sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined well. Divide batter between pans and bake in middle of oven until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes.

Cool layers completely in pans on racks. Run a thin knife around edges of pans and invert layers onto racks. Carefully remove wax paper and cool layers completely. Cake layers may be made 1 day ahead and kept, wrapped well in plastic wrap, at room temperature.

Frost with your favorite chocolate frosting recipe, or the recipe in the linked recipe (or if you run out of steam for making frosting, I don't want to push you, just go with frosting from a can for now!)

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake
This recipe is from the Domestic Goddess herself, Nigella Lawson, and it is easy and delicious, and it is one of those wonderful cakes where frosting it is not necessary.

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cups dark brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
• 1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons boiling water

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, put in a baking sheet in case of sticky drips later, and grease and line the 9x5 inch loaf pan with parchment paper (don't forget the parchment here, it's a very wet cake so you'll need it).

Combine the flour and baking soda in a small bowl, set aside. Beat the butter and sugar together, either with a wooden spoon or with an electric hand-held mixer, then add the eggs and vanilla, beating in well. Next, fold in the melted and now slightly cooled chocolate, blending it in gently and not beating hard. Then gently add the flour and baking soda mixture, alternately spoon by spoon, with the boiling water until you have a smooth fairly liquid batter. Pour into the lined loaf pan, and bake for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F and continue to cook for another 15 minutes. The cake will still be a bit squidgy inside (don't you love Nigella?), so an inserted cake tester or skewer won't come out completely clean.

Place the loaf pan on a rack, and leave to get completely cold before turning it out. Don't worry if it sinks in the middle: indeed, it will do so because it's such a dense and damp cake. Dust with powdered sugar, or don't worry about it, and slice and serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

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See, those didn't look that hard, now did they? The next time you reach for that box mix, don't do it! Think of these recipes and dozens of other easy ones, and bake it from scratch!

Getting more ambitious? Here are some fantastic tips about making and frosting layer cakes.

Don't be afraid of whipping egg whites

Last week, poor Roxy had a harrowing egg white experience. She was making these cupcakes, and started whipping the egg whites for them. And she whipped, and she whipped, and she whipped, and whipped some more (not like that, you dirty people), and then she brought the laptop into the kitchen and IMed me in panic after she had been whipping the egg whites for 15 minutes and there was froth but nothing else. She was typing with one hand while holding the electric beater in the other hand, and while she managed not to get any egg white in her laptop, the whites were still not light and cloudy. I talked her down, we figured out the problem, she started over, and soon had beautifully fluffy egg whites, and the resulting cupcakes were delicious. So, in this first installment of an occasional series about food and cooking, I am here to tell you: Don't be afraid of whipping egg whites.

Now, as Roxy's experience shows, beating egg whites can be a little tricky, but if you remember a few key things, it will be a breeze. First, start with your equipment: room temperature egg whites, a clean, dry bowl, and clean dry beaters. The most important thing for the latter two are that they are clean and, you guessed it, bone dry. Apparently a copper bowl is the best thing for whipping egg whites, but seriously, who has a copper bowl? Glass or metal will do just fine. As for your beater, I usually whip my egg whites in my stand mixer, but a hand mixer is actually easier, especially if you only have a few whites. Optional additions are cream of tartar or lemon juice, I'll get to that in a moment.

The easiest way to separate your egg whites is to crack the egg into your hand, and let the whites fall into the bowl through your fingers. This technique makes it so much easier and cleaner to do it that way than cracking the egg and shuttling the yolk back and forth until as much of the whites as possible are gone: this way you get almost all of the whites into the bowl, you run less of a chance of puncturing the yolk and getting any yolk into your whites, and any bits of broken egg shell stay on your hand, and not in your whites. In order to get the whites to room temperature, you can either put the eggs into a bowl of warm water before cracking them (dry them off before cracking so that water doesn't get into your whites), or once you've separated them, put a bowl of warm water under the bowl that holds your egg whites and let them sit for a few minutes.

Then just turn on your beater and start whipping. Start the beater at a relatively low speed, and then turn it up when they start frothing. At that point, you can add a tiny bit of that cream of tartar or lemon juice (about 1/8 of a teaspoon per egg white) because they stabilize the whites and make them fluffier, but if you don't have any, it's not a big deal. Then keep whipping until they get fluffy. Then you're done! As they start to get fluffy, it's always better to go slow and keep stopping to check, because you don't want to overwhip them (this one of the reasons why it's better to use a hand mixer than a stand mixer for this, because you don't want to walk away and forget about them, because then they'll get liquid again). See, that was easy, wasn't it? And it took only a few minutes.

So the next time you see a recipe that looks great, but you pass it by because you have to whip the egg whites, just stop, think "I can do this!", and don't be afraid of egg whites.

A few other handy links about beating egg whites:
Beating Egg Whites Tips and Hints [About.com]
A video on beating egg whites [Epicurious.com]
Stage by stage pictures of beaten egg whites [bakingsheet]

Any egg white questions, or ideas for other "Don't be afraid of..." for cooking? Comment here, email us at stopthinkdont@gmail.com, or hit us up on Twitter.

Don't lie about allergies

My friend Katie is very allergic to all nuts and legumes, from peanuts, to sesame seeds, to anything with soy. She can't go into any Asian restaurant, because there's soy around there everywhere, and she had to get a special steak dinner at our friend's Indian wedding (seriously, steak at a Hindu wedding). She has to ask questions whenever she orders pancakes at brunch, because there is frequently nut flour in some of those multi-grain pancakes and as she has discovered, a Sunday morning trip to the emergency room isn't exactly the most relaxing beginning to a week. She also happens to really hate cilantro, and always tries to make sure that it's not in anything that she gets. However, do you know what she never does? She never claims to be allergic to cilantro to make sure that there isn't even a tiny leaf of it on her plate. Because she knows that you just should not lie about allergies just to make sure you get something that you don't like.

Every chef and restaurant cook I know say that they roll their eyes when they get a ticket that refers to an allergy, because they get so many people who are obviously lying about being allergic to something just because they don't like it. Like the people who claim to be allergic to corn and need to get the potatoes as a side, but are happily chowing down on the chips and salsa. Or those who say that they have a wheat allergy but are eating bread at the table. And then there are those vegetarians out there who think that it's perfectly fine to say that they have a egg allergy so that they won't accidentally get eggs that they don't want to eat. And of course, there are the crazy people who say that they are allergic to butter just because you're trying to stay frighteningly thin.
Do you know what all of this does? It just makes life more dangerous for people like my friend Katie, who actually does have a life threatening allergy.

When people go around lying like this, it does two things. First, it decreases the importance of an actual allergy, so that people don't take them particularly seriously. If a little chicken stock gets in the food of a vegetarian, they may be upset and mortified, but they won't have to go to the emergency room like my friend Beth would (poultry allergy, seriously). So if you believe someone who is lying about their poultry allergy, and then find out later that there was chicken stock in there, you may just assume that having an allergy is not a big deal, so the next time someone comes to your home who you're cooking for or your restaurant and says that they have a poultry allergy, you won't have to worry about that chicken stock that's in the risotto.

And even worse, it makes people assume that everyone who claims to have an allergy is just lying about it, or at least exaggerating. So they won't worry about the egg that's in that housemade aioli, or the pepitas ground into that delicious mole, because they assume that as long as you can't see it, or can't really taste it, you'll be okay. And sure, they'll learn their lesson as soon as someone goes into anaphylactic shock in their restaurant, but I'm sure that that person who it happens to won't enjoy being the one armed man to teach that person a lesson.

So the next time you are thinking about explaining to your waiter that you have an asparagus allergy, just so that you won't have to deal with that asparagus pee, just stop, think about that person who will break out in violent hives at the table before even getting a chance to pee, and don't do it.

Don't hesitate to cook something delicious for yourself

Whether you live alone, your husband or wife is away, or your roommates are out of town, all of us have those nights where we want to eat something super delicious, and we're all alone. And you know what? Too many people use being alone as an excuse not to make something super delicious for themselves. I understand being too tired to cook for yourself on some nights, or wanting to curl up on the couch with some Indian takeout and a full TiVo. But one thing that I often hear from people is wanting something fancy and fussy, but "I don't want to go to all of that fuss just for myself" or that it's not worth the hassle to shop and cook just for yourself. And to that I say, don't say that! You are completely worth a great lasagna, a slow roasted prime rib, or a fantastic chocolate cake. Don't think that there's something wrong about cooking something fantastic for yourself, because you could not be more wrong.

First of all, cooking for just you is a chance to experiment. That wacky recipe with that ingredient that you'd never heard of? The cheese souffle that everyone says is easy but you just know you'll make it fall? The lemon curd that you want to try but you just know will turn into scrambled eggs? Make it for yourself! The worst that can happen is that it doesn't turn out well and you end up eating canned tuna for dinner, and no one has to know about the failure. But if it turns out great, then you have a fantastic new thing in your repertoire, and the confidence to know that you can make it again and again.

Secondly, cooking for yourself is a time when you can eat anything that you like, without paying attention to someone else's preferences or food issues. You love stinky cheese? Indulge with it stirred into a risotto. You adore the salty, briny flavor of anchovies? Add them to a fantastic pasta. You've always wanted to try that chicken with 40 cloves of garlic? Now is the time to do it. I have a friend who rushes to the kitchen to cook and eat a whole crab for herself as soon as her allergic to seafood husband goes out of town, and another who makes spaghetti carbonara when his non pork eating wife is working late. It's fun for food to be just for you sometimes.

And, hey, cooking for yourself is kind of like masturbation: sometimes you just need to please yourself. Sure, sometimes you wish you could share it with someone when it's fantastic, but then again, sometimes you don't want to have to think of someone else's needs, just your own. Hey, we all have needs, it's better to just be upfront about it. Those molten chocolate cakes are sometimes even better when eat them all just for you, and can ooh and ahh to your heart's content.

If you're in need of a cooking just for you primer, the woman who discovered Julia Child recently wrote a book all about that, so you're in excellent company, and there's a fun food column in the Washington Post all about cooking for one.

So the next time that you look at that recipe for crab risotto and think that it's not worth it to do all of that stirring just for yourself, just stop, think about how pleasing yourself is just as important as pleasing other people, and get to cooking.

Don't leave your host in the dark

This weekend, a friend and I were sharing the cooking duties for a Super Bowl party, and had more or less figured out what we were going to cook. And then a monkey wrench was thrown into the plans -- some of the guests for the party let my friend know that they were newly vegetarian. But you know what? As frustrating as it was to scrap our shrimp and sausage gumbo idea, having a two chili (one meat* and one black bean) menu was just fine, and we were both really happy that the people who came all ate and enjoyed the food. And afterward, we talked about how awful it would have been if the vegetarians hadn't let us know.

Almost all of us have a food that we won't or can't eat, either because of allergy, religion, health, morals, or just plain dislike. We have all learned how to deal with this at restaurants, by scouring ingredient lists for the dreaded cilantro (which I happen to love, but once went to lunch with a friend who insisted on leaving the restaurant because she didn't see anything on the menu without it), asking detailed questions to the waiter about whether that veggie burger contains mushrooms, or steering your friends toward the bread pudding instead of the creme brulee for the shared dessert. And it's easy around your family, because we always know about our sister's unusual hatred for chicken, the uncle who doesn't eat salmon, the vegan cousin, and dad who doesn't eat cooked apples. But what about when you're going to a dinner party with people that you don't know that well? Well, we are here to tell you, don't leave your host in the dark.

I love to cook for people, and I do it often. When I cook for people, it's not just to experiment with something new in the kitchen or impress with my cooking skills (though, sure, that's part of it), it's to make food that someone else will enjoy, and to have a happy meal with friends around a table. So when someone comes to my home, I want to please them, and I absolutely do not want to serve them anything that they can't or won't eat. If you are a vegetarian, I will absolutely make sure that there is a vegetarian main dish and appetizer for you, if you are lactose intolerant, well then I'll scrap that cheesecake for dessert, or maybe have two desserts. But for the love of God, don't be shy about this information, because then you'll be sitting around hungry, and I'll think that you either think that I'm seriously rude, or that my food is disgusting, and that's a recipe for a sad ending to a party.

Now, I'm not saying to email your host in advance with a list of your food preferences, or ask to approve the menu, because that would make us devote six or seven paragraphs to your behavior here on Don't Do That. But if you're not sure that your host knows that you're allergic to shellfish, please tell her, because she could be making clam chowder from scratch. If you don't know if your host knows that you don't eat beef, please tell him, because he could have already started smoking the brisket for dinner. The point of this is not to make you into the center of attention, or act like everyone should be catering to you -- honestly, would we tell you to do something like that? The point is that if you get to someone's home, and they're serving you food that you can't eat, any good host who discovers this will be mortified, and will wish that they had known.

This does presuppose that your host is someone who cares more about their guests than themselves, and I'm sure that many of you have had the opposite experience. So hosts, don't ignore your guests! I understand if you really want to make that crown roast of pork, believe me, I understand. But if four of the eight of your dinner guests don't eat pork, you might want to either make a beautiful roast chicken instead, or have two main dishes so that you can please everyone. And if you don't get any guidance from your guests, unless you know them really well, please ask them if they have any dietary restrictions, and try your best to satisfy them. Now, if someone says that they're gluten free and kosher, you may want to ask them if they could maybe bring a side dish, but generally, it's not that hard. And let me tell you, it feels so nice when someone is excited about whatever special meal that you prepared for them, it makes your frantic google searches all the more worth it.

So next time that you're planning to go to someone's house without telling them about your allergy to all nuts and seeds, just stop, think about how the secret ingredient in that amazing salsa that they've talked about could be pumpkin seeds, and don't do it.

* I know, it's Martha Stewart, not the source that you would think of for an amazing chili recipe, but oh my God that stuff was good. Do make that. You know, if your guests aren't vegetarian.

Don't Get Trashed At The Work Happy Hour

(Image via http://sayulitatequilajournal.com/)

Alas, it's Monday again. How was your weekend? Did it start, as mine did, with a Friday evening Happy Hour? If so, then we should definitely be friends - we can trade tips on the best deals (mine involves 2-for-1 drinks, cheap and delicious food, and getting out the door with a check for under twenty bucks). However, the more pertinent question is: who were you drinking with? Friends? Romans? Significant others? Awesome. Coworkers? We might need to chat. Because, this Monday morning, I am here to tell you, please: Don't Get Trashed At The Office Happy Hour.

Half of you are probably looking at me like I'm completely insane. "WHY," you ask, "would I socialize with THOSE people?? I have to see them all day, every day, and they drive me bonkers." Awesome. I'm sorry that, you know, you kind of hate your job, but you are probably not scheduling Happy Hour with the rest of your staff as we speak (Mondays are hard for me, too). But if you, like me, mostly like some of the people you work with, then we need to talk.

Let me tell you a quick story. About a month ago, a bunch of people I work with went for cheap margaritas after a company holiday party. By the end of the night - six hours later - there were four or five of us left. Our significant others had joined us, and we were thoroughly enjoying life. I was about halfway through my fourth marg (and before you scoff at me, these things are strong), and hadn't eaten dinner. Why? Because we had just come from a potluck! There was so much food! I was full! Of course, in my margarita-drenched haze, I neglected to realize that the giant potluck-y meal I had eaten was approximately eight or nine hours behind me. As a coworker - who, by the way, is one of my supervisors- said to me the next Monday, "You were sober! Until...you weren't." The night ended with me...in a state that I am choosing not to share, because my parents say they read this. (If they don't give me shit about this entry, I'll know they don't actually read it, and next week's post will be full of inappropriate stories. Cross your fingers!) (Hi Mom!)

Anyway. Lucky for me, this time it ended up a goofy story that we giggled about for a couple of days and then forgot about. Perhaps that's one of the bonuses of working in a field that really promotes self-care. But that is not normal, not something I'm going to count on in the future, and definitely not something that you should take a cue from.

Like it or not, we are grown-ups. And sure, when I was bemoaning my lack of maturity on this particular night to one of my best friends, she pointed out that part of the fun of being a grown-up is that it sometimes is okay to drink like a college student. She makes an excellent point. But the point I'm trying to make is that we - being adults - need to take into account the population of the people in our drinking group. Are they friends who you trade TV-on-DVD with? Friends with whom you occasionally waste entire weekends sitting on various back patios? Are you drinking with your significant other, with whom you can be your absolute silliest? Are they friends from work, with whom you have an entirely separate relationship outside of the office? Or is your booth full of colleagues and coworkers, folks who you respect and who you hope respect you? People you want to build a career with? People whose help you could use in your future professional endeavors? If the people you're emailing this morning fall into those categories, just stop, think about your future - and your limit - and don't order that extra drink on Friday.

Don't tinker with the ingredients and then blame the recipe

Hello, domestic gods and goddesses of the world! The internet has been a boon to those of us who love to cook, what with all of the fabulous recipe sites, great food blogs, fantastic personal sites of chefs and cookbook authors, and other great ways to talk about food and cooking together online. The internet has also been a great thing for people just learning to cook; we have sites with lots of pictures that take you step by step through a recipe, great instructional videos, and encyclopedic information about how, when, and what you can use as a substitute. It's fantastic to share cooking ideas, triumphs, and sometimes, failures, with other food lovers, and I've gotten to the point where I look for the comments to see how other people liked it with every recipe, and get disappointed if there are none (sometimes I involuntarily do this even when looking through cookbooks). As great as all of those things are, it is about those comments that we need to have a little chat about today. The comments can be a source of great and useful advice, but unfortunately, they can also be both useless and ridiculous. In short, don't tinker with the ingredients and then blame your failure on the recipe.

Look, I understand -- sometimes you really want to make that quiche, but you have only onions, and not shallots. Or sometimes that scone recipe is calling to you, but you just have regular lemons, not Meyer lemons. Maybe you see a great looking recipe for pancakes, and you're all ready to make it on Sunday morning, and you realize that you don't have any eggs (use mayonnaise instead -- no really, I swear). Or there's that time you realize that your dinner guest is vegan, not just vegetarian, so you want to know if you can make that vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe work. I am absolutely not trying to tell you not to experiment, because playing with your food is the soul of cooking, and sometimes you discover something great! (Earth Balance for butter and Tofutti cream cheese for the cream in that shepherd's pie recipe, fyi, even the meat eaters loved it). A great way to learn about cooking is to make a recipe strictly as its written the first time, and then swap in and sub out different ingredients the next few times, it helps you to learn what does and doesn't work, and what you like the best.

However, sometimes you experiment, and it's a miserable failure. That's okay, it happens to all of us, and that's what your family pet is for (and hey, most failed desserts are fine piled in a bowl and topped with whipped cream or ice cream). If you used nonfat milk instead of cream to make caramels, and you had a sticky, sweet mess, chalk that one up to experience. If you used sushi rice instead of arborio to make risotto, make a note to yourself that that won't work so well, so you won't be tempted to do it again in the future. If you were trying to be a little healthy and used all whole wheat flour in that chocolate cake and it's dense and leaden, well, now you know. And in these instances, it can be helpful to share your experiments in the comments section for the next person who is in your situation, so that other people don't make the same mistake that you did.

But when this happens, please, don't rant and rave about the recipe online and then hit "post comment". It's not the recipe's fault that you used chicken thighs instead of pork (not to mention the "dusty" chiles). The recipe didn't tell you that you could use honey instead of corn syrup in that pecan pie, or replace the wine in your beef bourguignon with Welch's grape juice, or use margarine instead of butter in those chocolate croissants, or completely mess up that boiling water. There are two reasons why: it is completely unhelpful for anyone else looking to the recipe comments for help; and it makes you look like an idiot. If you didn't have the common sense to know that using American cheese instead of Gruyère in those cheese puffs was not going to work, you really should not let the rest of the world know about that. If you couldn't find a can of chipotle chiles to use in that enchilada sauce and instead used ketchup because you figured that the they were the same color, I want you to start following Rick Bayless on Twitter and do not tell anyone that you were using his recipe. There's nothing wrong with getting something wrong, but at least have the humility to recognize that you were the one who was wrong.

So, for all of our sakes, next time you use peanut butter instead of peanut oil to make those fish and chips, or ginger ale instead of grated ginger to make that stir fry, and your dish is a failure, do me a favor. Before angrily rating that recipe with one star and telling the world that you just made little change, and you don't know why your fish and chips were so sticky, just stop, think about how the fault lies with you and not the recipe, and don't do it.

Don't tell the world about your new diet

It's January 13th. Your new year's resolution was to eat well/exercise more/lose weight. You've been eating lots of kale and quinoa, grilling chicken breasts and having them with spinach and brown rice, and your feet hurt from breaking in those new running shoes. It's all very exciting right now, we know, but please don't tell the world about your new diet. Because you know what? The world doesn't care.

"No, no, but it is important for everyone to know!" you say to me. No. No it's not. We don't care that you're not eating carbs anymore, we don't care that you cut out gluten, we don't care that you're one of the many eating like a caveman (really, people? like a caveman???), we don't care that you're a raw foodist. We really don't care that you're doing the Master Cleanse (enjoy that cayenne pepper/lemon juice/maple syrup drink existence!), or the Cabbage Soup diet (your apartment is going to smell fantastic). We don't care that your special diet is going to clear up our skin, or get rid of our headaches, or make our hair grow.

We want you to stop talking about the obesity epidemic, or how Americans really eat too much protein, or too much salt, or too much processed food. We know that Michael Pollan has 64 rules for eating and you're following every one, you just don't need to list them all for us (we all already read The Omnivore's Dilemma, we got it). Stop telling us how many "points" you've eaten so far today, and really stop telling us many points are in this latte, or this tangerine, or this cupcake that I'm lovingly about to eat. Stop looking at my lunch hungrily, and then proceed to explain to me how horrible refined flour is for you.

Most of all, please spare us when you have the "I broke my diet!" panic because you had a few french fries from someone else's plate at lunch, or a cookie that someone brought into the office. Don't lament to us that you exercised only four times this week instead of six and your trainer is going to KILL you. We're just going to roll our eyes at you for spoiling the deliciousness that is a nice cookie with guilt, and wonder how quickly we can disengage ourselves from that conversation. Because do you know what all of that talk is? Boring, that's what it is.

Don't get me wrong, I love food, and I love talking about food. For part of your diet, did you find a great new recipe for roasted brussels sprouts? Please share, I'm all ears! (This is mine, though some bacon tossed in there is always excellent, and lemon juice makes a nice change from the vinegar). Did you discover a bakery that makes an amazing multi-grain bread? Lead me to it. Did you find the vendor at the farmer's market who has the very best grapefruits? I'd love it if you shared your secret! Did you find a fantastic new yoga class that makes you sweat and feel relaxed? Tell me all about it. Those things are all interesting! But a long discourse about your diet, and lists of things that you can't do and that you can't eat interest no one but yourself. So please, when you're opening your mouth to tell me that actually, celery has negative calories, just stop, think about how boring that is, and don't.