kitchenmage

Quick question for the vegetarians, vegans and the like...

I am in the middle of writing a cookbook and would like to include some tips for parents of children who have declared they will no longer eat food with faces. Whether it's nutrition, the meatless recipe that you cooked 3-4 times a week at first, or the delicate handling a child who seems to be rejecting your lovingly prepared meal, parents need help with this. So, two simple questions:

• If you could some advice to the parents of a newly vegetarian/vegan child, what would it be?
• What is the worst thing you can do if your child decides to eat a meatless diet? (Personal experiences from hell are welcome.)

Thanks for your contributions, everyone.

Quick tips to make you a better cook

A new cook has so many things to remember. All those terms (in French, no less); which tool to use for which task; how to take a whole, raw ingredient like a pineapple and turn it into pineapple slices; the difference between coarsely diced, finely diced and minced.

Lately, I have been recognizing how lucky I was to learn my way around a kitchen surrounded by a largish family of people offering tips along the way. I always had someone to ask leading questions ("The rice will be ready in half an hour, do you think the chicken should go in the oven?"), whisper reminders and correct bad technique. I have been saved from a large number of disasters, and the related discouragement, over the years by a well-placed bit of advice.

NTS: weigh all the empty bowls

One handy thing about having a kitchen scale is the ability to reset (or tare) the scale to 0 between additions of ingredients--this lets me grab an empty bowl, toss it on the scale, hit 0, add butter, hit 0, add sugar, hit 0, and so on. Each ingredient gets weighed individually even though they are in the same container. Pretty cool, huh?

My downfall is that I keep finding myself with a bowl that already has something in it that I need to weigh. Like now, I am making a chocolate mint torte and have a bowl of broken chocolate to which I just added melted butter. Butter that was being infused with mint. Butter that stuck to the mint. And I don't know how much butter stuck to the mint. It's like doing an algebra problem with more unknowns than knowns. beats head on keyboard

Which is why I need to weigh all my bowls when they are empty. And put a list on the inside of the cupboard door above the counter where the scale lives. It'll make the math so much easier. (and really, I only use about 10 different bowls for mixing things, so how hard could it be?) I'll do it today, just as soon as the sourdough bread and torte are done...and the chutney is canned...and I get back from the store...and clean things up a bit...and...and...