Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 50 seconds
I hate recipes. Well, they’re useful but I can never follow them. Even my own recipes. Why?
Well, when it’s a recipe from a cookbook or tv show, it often has ingredients not easily available in Egypt, or at least not regularly found in my home. So I switch them for something else. #ContextMatters
Even dessert recipes that are my moms or my own, usually meant to be v precise… I switch them around too, because I wonder if adding something different will make it better. It sometimes does. Making my mom’s low-fat cake with twice the yogurt and using apple juice instead of sugar syrup took it to a higher level (and made the batter easier to mix for someone with my back problems). #AdaptingToOne’sNeedsImportant
Thirdly, i often simply forget where I had gotten a recipe or can’t find the link or file on my computer or phone or wherever, so I have to work from memory. This is a good exercise because what we learn from a recipe should, in theory, help us #Improvise when needed. Work with what we have. I did this recently for a special rice pudding cooking method that involves an oven and frequently opening to stir. I got it mostly right except it was ready about half an hour early (probably coz of quantities or oven temp).
So with all that in mind… Chrissi Nerantzi made a suggestion on #rhizo15 facebook group and after some moaning about none of us liking recipes 🙂 some of us started contributing. So now if you missed it, here is what we’re doing: a recipe (of sorts) for open learning. It’s evolving as different people edit it. So even though i am no fan of recipes, i can see how some tips for people who are new can be helpful. As long as they’re “taken with a grain of salt”, not prescriptive, and adaptable.
There are other recipes we could work on, anyone can start on in the folder Chrissi created here. Hmmm maybe we could do one each week?
But can I just say that this is an awesome way to start building relationships in a MOOC, Chrissi? Gathering around a useful “make” pre-MOOC even 🙂
I laughed .. is seems we share approaches to cooking when following recipes … they are there for guidance, but not as a rule to follow … 🙂 I’m fortunate to live someplace where I can get most of the ingredients even for the most obscure recipes!
I like not being able to find the right ingredients. My daughter gave me a book on Indian cooking and I went to a great amount of trouble ordering the right spices online and ended up making one great dish EXACTLY as instructed and it was so good, making it again seemed like totally overdoing it–or cheating. If we do the same thing over and over it stops being special.