Recipes and the value of a dippy egg
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- January 18, 2019
- 1221
I’ve come to the point of the year where food has become irrelevant. I want to eat it, but I don’t want to cook it. I save recipes in the gigantic terabyte (probably way more — who knows?) that is my Pinterest page, but I never look at them again. They’re neatly filed away for eternity on shelves made up of whatever the inter-webs are made up of. Digital currents? Keanu Reeves brain?
I digress.
I do have several recipes I use from there, and they’re all desserts, peanut butter and chocolate, probably. I like the idea of saving them and having them neatly at my fingertips if I ever decide I need them.
On second thought Pinterest is a bit of a hoarding tool. I’ve been hoarding pins for years, haven’t I? As Marie Kondo says, for those of you caught up in her ways, if it doesn’t spark joy, you should toss it.
Regardless, I do have a half of a bookshelf devoted to the cookbooks I’ll never give up. Inside these battered and used tomes are recipes for Busy Day Chicken & Rice, Crazy Cake, and Madison County Scalloped Potatoes — all recipes I use. They stay in rotation because they’re tried and true, loved recipes.
Also in heavy rotation is Mom’s Hamburger-Potato-Carrot Casserole served with applesauce. I do not make applesauce and do spoon it straight from a jar onto my plate. I can hear your horrified gasps, which makes me stick my spoon further into the applesauce jar for a big bite. I have not disappeared into the maelstrom by not making homemade applesauce.
We here at the Herrera residence a mile outside Berlin also love Mexican food. Many people ask my husband if we eat it every day, and I always roar with laughter when he tells me this. If I’m lucky, I cook supper maybe three or four days a week.
Sometimes we eat fried paninis if work has been overwhelming, or often it’s dippy eggs with toast, sometimes scrambled. There is nothing better than a good dippy egg. With the two of us living at home, there’s no need for fancy cooking. It is amazing what will fill you up, also how handy restaurants are.
But back to the Mexican food, of which my love for numbers the stars in the sky, maybe more. In heavy rotation: thin steaks fried with onions and simmered gently in a light homemade sauce. This is served with fried potatoes. Also, I frequently make quesadillas, memelas topped with beans, queso fresco and a salsa fresca or a time-consuming-yet-worth-it pan chock full of cheesy chiles rellenos.
For Christmas this year I received a 703-page book simply titled “Mexico: The Cookbook,” and it is immense in its thoroughness and thoughtful recipes. Another cookbook I cherish is “From the Heart” by Zarela Martinez. Her beautiful stories and recipes from Mexico have sat on my shelf for nearly 20 years. That book is well-used, and I’ve learned much from it. I’m still learning in the kitchen.
Still learning doesn’t mean some days I can’t stand to think of making one morsel of food. I’d rather sit and watch the snow fall. But a pot of soup is easy to throw together: chicken noodle soup or sopa de albondigas.
It’s cold outside, and soup does warm the soul, no matter where the recipe originated from. Mom always put potatoes in her chicken noodle soup, and my mother in law always stuffed her albondigas (meatballs) with a quarter of a hard-boiled egg, both delicious and hearty.
What does Missy do? I’ll have to ask my husband or kids. When I’m cooking, I’m in the zone and do things by muscle memory, often cooking an entire meal without stopping to ponder ingredients. If this is where I’m at with cooking, I’m guessing I deserve those days when all I want for supper is popcorn or cereal. I’ve earned it.