Cooking

Cooking is like love.

It should be entered into

 with abandon or not at all.  

Harriet Van Horne

Are you a stick-to-the-recipe kind of cook

or a follow-your-instincts one?

Do you precisely measure ingredients or do you eyeball?

And can you remember the biggest food flop

you've ever created?

I can.

We had invited a couple over for dinner.

I was making Quiche Lorraine in my 14" quiche plate

with a sinfully rich press-in-butter pastry.

I was also making a spinach salad

(more bacon, more eggs)

and a Baked Alaska

(you've got it: More eggs!)

Somewhere in the back of my mind,

I must have worried about having my guests 

and the love of my life

drop dead of clogged arteries

before the end of the evening

but it was one of those unarticulated,

free floating thoughts.

The quiche usually took 1 hr 15 minutes

to bake, but not that night.

I checked it at an hour---

still a liquid puddle.

Same after another 15 minutes.

30 minutes.

45 minutes.

It was a little less soggy,

but not the usual fluffy delicacy.

My guests weren't ruffled

because they were pouring a fine Merlot

more often than I was checking the oven.

Sloshed doesn't even begin to cover their condition.

And finally,

after two hours of mother-henning the quiche,

I served it anyway.

Because I'm not much of a drinker,

I was the only one who realized

that the quiche

was nothing but bacon, Swiss Cheese,

cream and grated nutmeg.

I had never poured in the eggs.

Oops!