Hooray For Pie!!!

In keeping with my food theme for the week I would like to share "my" award winning recipe for key lime pie. I have to be honest, I got this off of AllRecipes.com (my favorite recipe site) so it's not really mine. The only changes I would suggest are: Use fresh key limes if you can get them but if you can't, use Nellie and Joe's key lime juice 'cause it's almost as good (sometimes better  given how crappy limes are in the grocery store). Use heaping tablespoons of lime zest. If you use the bottled lime juice, use 3-5 large regular limes to get your zest. The zest is important so don't skip it! Sweetened condensed milk comes in 14 0z cans so you'll need just under 2 cans for 1 pie and ~3.5 cans for 2 pies. Don't get the low fat stuff, it's just not worth it. If you're doing fresh key limes, you'll need 20-30 for one pie and 50-60 for two. Cook times vary but for one pie I've found I need ~10 min. and ~18 min for two pies. Don't hold me to that though. Enjoy!  Key Lime Pie VII

Rated: Submitted By: ANNRICHARDSON Photo By: justamom Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 8 Minutes Ready In: 55 Minutes Servings: 8

"Along with a bit of grated lime rind swirled in, sour cream is blended with condensed milk and lime juice for this pie 's very rich and creamy key lime filling."

Ingredients:

1 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crust 3 cups sweetened condensed milk 1/2 cup sour cream

3/4 cup key lime juice 1 tablespoon grated lime zest

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.	In a medium bowl, combine condensed milk, sour cream, lime juice, and lime rind. Mix well and pour into graham cracker crust.
3.	Bake in preheated oven for 5 to 8 minutes, until tiny pinhole bubbles burst on the surface of pie. DO NOT BROWN! Chill pie thoroughly before serving. Garnish with lime slices and whipped cream if desired.

Reasons Why Writing Is Bit Like Cooking: Part Two

On Monday I posted three reasons why I think cooking is a bit like writing in that to have success in either you need to have the proper ingredients, a good sense of timing, and a willingness to realize that everyone makes mistakes.

If you're like me, your always first in line for seconds. With that in mind, here are a couple reasons why a good writer isn't that different from a good chef.

1. What we create for ourselves is consumed by others:  A good chef cooks because food inspires them. It's what they're passionate about. If you don't believe me, just try shopping with a chef. They don't see the individual products on the shelf, they see all the possibilities that such ingredients hold. A chef creates because cooking makes them happy. But the product they create isn't for them, it's for their customers. The best meal ever prepared doesn't mean anything if there's nobody there to taste it. The same goes for writing. We write because it's what we love. We look at the world and see plot lines and characters where others see the mundane. But at the end of the day what we write, hopefully, will be consumed by someone else. Both cooking and writing are art forms meant to me shared.
2. As soon as it leaves the kitchen, it's not ours anymore: Like I said, for both writers and cooks the products of all that hard work are meant to be shared. The thing is, as soon as that dish leaves the kitchen, it isn't yours anymore. Everyone interprets food a little differently. Take a food that 10 people love and you'll get 10 different reasons why they love it. And of course there are 10 other people just as ready to tell you their 10 reasons for why they hate it. A chef can create a dish with a certain flavor profile and dining experience in mind but as soon as it reaches the consumer there's there's no way to know how any given person will interpret it. The same goes for writing. As writers we create characters and worlds for specific reasons that make sense to us but as soon as someone else gets their hands on it, all bets are off. I once had a reader explain to me why he was certain that a scene I wrote was actually a thinly veiled commentary on barriers to social mobility in America's ghettos. Seriously, I just let him talk because it made me sound so much smarter than I actually am. 

I think I said in Monday's post that I was going to make this a three part series but...I have a short attention span so I think this will be it. I hope you like what I've prepared.

Bon appetit!

Reasons Writing Is Bit Like Cooking: Part One

Back in March I posted about why writing is a bit like working out. It's a good post (IMHO) and I like it.

The thing is, I don't love to work out. It's ok. It helps me keep my girlish figure. But the main reason I go to the gym is to support my true love and addiction: FOOD!

I love food. I love to eat. I love to buy food. I love the Food Network. I LOVE FOOD!

And I also love to cook. There is no better way to wind down from a long day than to crack open a beer (another thing I LOVE), bust out some pots and pans, and get to cookin'. My specialties include pad thai, vegi burritos, stuffed cheese burgers, fried sage winter squash soup, spaghetti squash and grueyere, pumpkin roll, and my award winning key lime pie. Mmmmmmm...

I love to cook so I think about it a lot. Because of this I've noticed some definite parallels between cooking and something else I love to do and ponder: writing.

I started out intending to post five reasons why writing is like cooking but I kept coming up with more. Instead of doing an insanely long post, I'm going to make it into a three part post.

So without further ado, here are my first three reasons that writing is a bit like cooking:

1. Ingredients Matter: I love the TV show Chopped. If you haven't seen it, basically it's the cooking version of MacGyver. World-class chefs are given baskets filled with crazy ingredients and instructed to make world-class meals. Stuff like "You have 20 minutes to make an appetizer using pig testicles, licorice candy, shoe leather, and some fruit as yet undescribed by science." Seriously crazy stuff. And sometimes they fail. Even though these are very talented cooks with years of experience under their belt, sometimes their dishes turn out terrible. The moral of the story: it's a lot easier to make a quality product if you use quality ingredients. The same goes for writing. We all know the basic ingredients of a good story but just being aware of them isn't enough. You have to get intimate with these ingredients (bow chika bow wow). You have to practice with them. Use fresh plot lines instead of dried out cliches. Avoid bland at all costs. Spice things up! Bring in outside influences and expand your boundaries. Use high quality ingredients.     
2. Timing Matters: Good cooks manage time well. You can't start your scallops 45 minutes before it's time to serve or they'll have the texture of a Goodyear tire. If that rice doesn't have enough time to cook your guests will need dental work. Cooking a quality meal means starting things at the appropriate times, giving them the time they need (and not a second more), and then picking the right time to finish. Sound familiar? A common writing mistake (I know I've been guilty of this one) is starting a story at the wrong point. Knowing when to start can be just as important as knowing when to finish (which is also super important). A good writer needs to manage the timing of his/her story so that everything starts at the right time, is given the proper amount of time, no more, no less, and finishes when it should.
3. You Will Make Mistakes: The first time I cooked on my own I was seven. I woke up early one Saturday morning planning to make my parents pancakes. They came out golden brown and fluffy, just like good pancakes should. So why did my dad look like a penguin regurgitating food for its young? Simple, I used baking soda instead of baking powder. And I used extra. So basically I made salt cakes. My mom and dad assured me that they weren't that bad, added more syrup, and ate them with a smile. What good parents. They're lucky the extreme sodium content didn't result in an instant heart attack. "Boy kills parents with pancakes!" Anyway, the point is that everyone make mistakes when cooking and when writing. My first writing efforts were probably even worse than those pancakes. But if you love it then you stick with it. And you get better. And you add bananas and walnuts to your pancakes. 

Mmmmmmm....pancakes.