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Jane's avatar

Love it, got to try to do it one day. I totally agree about recipes, I still buy cookbooks but rarely look at them afterwards and get myself into extraordinary pickles if I’m trying to be good- following them to the letter. Often it’s because the method starts to feel so familiar that it’s easy to go off piste and just create something new / else. I never know how it’s supposed to be unless there’s a photograph of the finished article 🤣

Whenever I’m asked for my recipes I try to remember what I did before and then tell them it’s not imperative to do certain things in order. Experimenting is the key of life & love ❤️

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Vicky Franklin's avatar

I love cooking as well Ms Bearden. I too take the same approach as you and am in complete agreement with your article. I couldn’t have wrote it better myself. Thank You for the recipe for yogurt by the way! ~Vicky

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Cristina Moon's avatar

I love the instruction to hold your pinkie in the warmed milk instead of using a thermometer. (Bah, humbug!) Our bodies can be pretty accurate about these things but we've really dulled our senses.

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karen z golden's avatar

As I rush through my life for no really good reason, I am constantly rebuking my myself with the trite but true refrain, haste makes waste. Wasted time, rushed moments only to do whatever it is all over again. It puts me in the mind of another adage: measure twice, cut once.

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Charlotte Freeman's avatar

Yes this -- it's so hard though! I mean, I don't have kids, work at home, have more time than most people -- and still, the past few months have felt like rushing from one thing to the next with my hair on fire!

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Mary Ann Bearden's avatar

So many people look at recipes like they were following the instructions on rebuilding a carburetor. Experiment!

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Charlotte Freeman's avatar

I think in part, it's because a lot of younger people learned to cook from the explosion of food cooking shows in the aughts, without much exposure to everyday home cooking, and tend to think of cooking = restaurant food. It's a topic I'll probably come back to, but I need a little more time to not just sound like "the kids these days!"

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Gail Waldby's avatar

The hot water in the cooler trick sounds good.

My Excalibur food dehydrator works well for making yogurt.

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Charlotte Freeman's avatar

I imagine my oven set on bread proof would work too -- I like the non-electric part of using the cooler. I have one of those six-pack-sized coolers (I have no idea where it came from?) that is perfect for both pint and quart sized mason jars.

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