when did it start? this trend of cooking everything with something else?
tilapia with garlic aioli.
linguine with olives, lemons, and rubbed butter.
chicken with pecans and balsamic reduction.
not only do we cook with, we cook with stuff that we don't even know what it is! aioli, rubbed butter, and balsamic reduction? really?
for quite some time now, i have toyed with (ha! with!) the idea of writing a cookbook titled something like, "how to cook and never say with," or "cooking without." somethin' like that. but then, i realize that those cookbooks have already been written - they're called grandma's recipe cards.
a coupla days ago, a friend posted a picture of her 90-something-year old mother's fruitcake-baking process and the hand-written recipe was in the photo. it was faded, as all beloved recipes should be, and it had spills and stains all over it. it was titled, simply enough, "my favorite recipe." not even "fruitcake," and certainly not "fruitcake with walnut, rum, and glazed butter thingamajig."
that's how we used to cook. and then we went and got all bon appetit-y. i miss the days of, "what's for dinner/beef." what's for dinner/meatloaf.
what's for dinner.........leftovers.
i miss the days when beef and meatloaf and leftovers had plenty of stuff to go with it.
we just didn't feel the need to brag about it.
