Anything worth doing takes practice. It takes jumping in and trying new things, and not being afraid of failure. In fact, embracing failure and learning from it is essential to success. I'm learning to apply this to so many aspects of my life, from my dogged determination to succeed as a realtor despite the obvious setbacks of the last year, to my endless attempts to improve the quality of my life despite the setbacks of decades' worth of doctors and friends telling me everything was in my head. Incrementally, I am indeed moving forward. I am showing another house tomorrow, to clients who swear they are still in this game with me even after our stumbles in November. I am feeling healthier overall, but not beating myself up over whether or how often I need pain killers. I'm still writing every day, and I'm putting more emphasis on fiction, where I've wanted to thrive my entire life, since I was in grade school. But that isn't the only genre I'm working in...
I've found it necessary to modify recipes for a myriad of reasons over the years, to make dinners cheaper, to accommodate food allergies, to improve flavors, or to avoid going to the store so I make do with what's already in the house. Since I was forced to give up all grains (except corn, which I occasionally come running back to, crying, "I can't quit you!"), I have learned to be even more creative and self-reliant in the kitchen. To be clear, I have ALWAYS been creative and self-reliant in the kitchen, and I refuse to be anything other than arrogant about my skills. But eliminating a whole food group has made for some interesting trials and errors over the last three years. Gluten is the protein that creates stretch in dough, trapping air bubbles to make foods light, and it makes things chewy. Non-glutenous flours just can't recreate this trick. Trust me, if I could find any non-grain flours that could truly make a big, chewy sourdough pretzel, my fortune would be made. Even without that magic unicorn, I have compiled enough recipes of my own invention to make a fairly decent grain-free comfort food cookbook. Older daughter has been riding me for three months now to rush it to print. But I am not to be hurried. I'm in the testing phase. I don't write things down when I cook, and I certainly do not measure. I cook by how things smell, taste, and feel. It takes repeated tests to verify the quantities I'm writing down are the right ones. If this means I have to make spectacular gourmet meals over and over to confirm my results, then I am willing to throw myself on that grenade. Mr X seems willing to be my taste-test-dummy as well.
While I am revisiting recipes I already know are winners, I still try new things. I'm glad I haven't already published, so that I still have time to add in new successes. Like tonight. Holy crap, like tonight. I had to make something with ground beef, because I'd bought a bunch of it at Costco, and had to decide by tomorrow whether to cook or freeze it. So tonight was beef stroganoff night. I've made it a few times over the years, but it was mostly mediocre. I always avoided mushrooms, but discovered last time that if I chop them up small enough, I can get the umami taste they provide without having to chew their nasty texture. I let Pinterest give me a few hints at ingredients I'd been missing, but I didn't bother to read the instructions. I substituted to remove grains and added a few herbs and spices I liked. It was superb. But it was only the dressing for my real success: Spatzle. I've tried once or twice to make egg noodles, and I honestly failed before. I wanted to make a grain-free spatzle to accompany the stroganoff, so once again, I set out for Pinterest. The first and only pin I looked at said it was flour, eggs, salt, and milk. That's it. Well, I knew I needed a blend to replace the wheat flour, and I chose garbanzo, cassava, and potato starch. I also knew that I needed xanthan gum to bind it. I followed instructions, got creative, and lo and behold, I made spatzle noodles. Not just that. They were absolutely indistinguishable from noodles made from wheat flour. With stroganoff on top, they were perfect, but they were even good alone with a little butter and salt, when I sampled them. I think this means that before this cookbook is ready to sell to the public, I am going to have to practice making schnitzel and spaztle. Lots and lots of practice.
I did not take pictures of my dinner, but I have been taking several of Murray lately. His wheelchair is on its last legs (pun intended). It has been beaten to hell, and he has torn through several harnesses. Right now the only thing that keeps him in it is the strap over his shoulders. So sometimes when he gets rowdy chasing Bump or protects the yard from the evil trash truck in the alley, he ends up arse-over-teakettle in the mud. Most of the time it doesn't bother him in the least. Sometimes he actually enjoys the chance to lie down in the yard without his butt in the air. Once in a while he ends up cold, muddy, and covered in poo. Regardless, once he is righted, he is just fine. It seemed like a good metaphor for my cooking experiments.
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