One of my goals is to learn how to cook. I try to pick out at least one new recipe each week to try. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they flop. But I learn something with each experiment, whether it succeeds or not.
Take Christmas dinner. For Thanksgiving I'd done turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. So for Christmas, I decided I wanted to break with tradition altogether. I love Mexican food, so I picked out some festive-sounding recipes including mango flan for dessert.
Small problem: I could not find any mangos at the store. Not fresh, not jarred, not canned, not freeze-dried. No mangos. So I had to make a substitution. Since it was Christmas, I used canned sweet potatoes. (Are you gagging yet?)
Then I had to caramelize sugar. (Did I mention I'm not a great cook?) I had no idea what I was doing, and I ended up with brown rock candy. When I mixed everything together, it was a really ugly mess. So I pushed everything through a strainer, shoved it in the oven, and hoped for the best.
It took forever to get done. I was scared to cut into it. It was orange. Bright orange custard.
But, oh, was it good! No one could get enough of it. It was the hit of the dinner. (By contrast, we had trouble choking down the enchiladas.) My husband and I fought over the last square.
I bet you're waiting for me to relate this back to writing. I'm getting there!
I approach writing much as I do cooking. I don't like writing the same old thing, just like I don't want to fix turkey and dressing more than once a year. Been there, done that. So I tend to make ... substitutions. I have characters with odd occupations. I sometimes have bizarre plots and out-of-the-ordinary settings. Yams instead of mangos.
Sometimes--in fact, a lot of times--my odd ideas don't work out. But, like with cooking a recipe that flops, I always learn something useful. And when one of my unconventional ideas works out, when something that sounded crazy going in actually turns into a good story, it's the most exciting thing in the world for me. I feel like I'm charting new territory, giving readers a little something different. A lot of people prefer plain ol' custard. But thankfully there are readers out there who would love to try yam flan!
Until next time, thanks for visiting!
Kara Lennox
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4 comments:
The yam flan sounds good. I love yams. It's always nice to try something different.
I had to melt chocolate recently. There are just way too meny rules. Don't let any water in, keep stirring, don't stick finger in to taste(this was the hardest to follow).
LOL, Christa. I HAVE to taste when I'm cooking. Candy is hard to get the knack of. I made some almond brittle last year that turned out pretty well, but the first batch was a learning experience. (More like almond gravel.)
Sounds like you hit on something quite yummy, Kara. You're braver than I, though. I never try anything new for the holidays because if it turned out to be a flop (which it usually does) I'd hear about it for the rest of my life. However, when I do my holiday baking (usually a week or so before Christmas) I always try a new cookie or candy.
Hey, Cindy! nice to see you here. My family is pretty polite. They're impressed that I'm cooking at all. And they know whoever complains has to host the following year, heh heh heh.
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