LJ Idol Week 12: The Sincerest Form of Flattery
I think it started with Taco Bell.
My family doesn’t eat out that much. My mom likes to come home from work and cook supper. She loves to cook. We only go out to eat on a rare special occasion. Birthday dinners are usually cooked at home, which is more than fine with us kids.
The only other time we eat out is if we’re already out doing something. We hardly ever leave the house just to go to a restaurant, but if we’re already out running errands or something, we might stop by our favorite local Italian restaurant or run through a drive-through.
Which I think is how it started.
We used to eat at Taco Bell more than we do now. There wasn’t really any particular reason for this; it’s just one of the cluster of fast-food restaurants that basically makes up our little town, so it was always on the way home from pretty much anywhere we might have been.
Then I got food poisoning. It was a fairly minor case as food poisoning goes, and we never determined for sure that that’s even what it was, but it all seemed awfully coincidental. I don’t think I’ve been to a Taco Bell since. I can’t even say that that’s why, but I’m sure it factors in there somewhere.
But my sister loved their chilitos. And I loved their tacos within a taco. (I know that’s not what they’re called, but that’s what I’ve always thought of them as: a hard taco wrapped in a soft taco.) So my mom went to work. The chilitos were easy: Just get a tortilla shell, spoon some chili into it, sprinkle on some shredded mozzarella, wrap it up, and stick it in the microwave. Strictly imitation, except way yummier because they’re made fresh, from the microwave right to our plates.
The tacos within a taco proved more of a challenge because they involved making a hard taco with all the fixings, wrapping it in a tortilla shell, and grilling it on the stove without it falling apart everywhere. To this day, Mom says they’re a pain to make and will only make them every so often. But they’re yummy. Oh, are they yummy. And Mom did it one better with the tacos within a taco. There’s no imitation here; they’re her own creation based loosely on something we kids loved at a fast food restaurant.
McDonald’s breakfast burritos and breakfast sandwiches came next. My brother loved their sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits, and my sister loved their breakfast burritos. But I always found the biscuits too hard and crumbly. So again my mom set to work in the kitchen, and now quite often we wake to the sounds and smells of sausage and bacon frying. She’ll scramble up a skillet of cheese eggs, fry some bacon or sausage, and stick some biscuits in the oven. Then, she’ll cut the biscuits in half, spoon some of the cheese eggs onto each biscuit, top each one with a strip of bacon or a sausage round, and put the other biscuit halves back on top. There’s nothing like fresh, warm, fluffy sausage or bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits in the morning.
When Kentucky Fried Chicken came out with their snackers, my dad told me I had to try them. I did, and they were yummy. No, they were really yummy. But, like I said, my family doesn’t eat out that much. So we didn’t find that many opportunities to drop by KFC for a couple snackers.
Enter my mom and her love for cooking, and before long we were eating homemade snackers.
Shortly after that, McDonald’s came out with their chicken wraps. Now we’ve almost always got the makings for a wrap at home. At first it was the standard chicken and ranch rap, the same concept as McDonald’s, only homemade. But since then we’ve branched out to turkey and bacon wraps, ham and cheese wraps, and chicken wraps with salsa.
Eventually, Mom moved on to dishes that were slightly more complicated. As a family, I don’t think we’ve ever gone to any restaurant that could really be called fancy. About the most fancy restaurant we frequent is Rich & Charlie’s, an Italian restaurant with three locations near where we live. And we usually only go there for special occasions: a graduation, a major birthday, or some other kind of celebration.
But oh do I love their tortellini. And before that it was their cheese stuffed manicotti.
Working with these recipes wasn’t like working with fast food; these dishes were more complicated and used all kinds of spices. There were the ingredients Mom could easily see: the peas and prosciutto in the tortellini, the ricotta cheese in the manicotti. But most of the spices she had to determine by taste.
And it worked. It worked even better than we thought it would. No, the tortellini dish isn’t exactly like it is at Rich & Charlie’s; the flavor of the sauce is a bit different, and it’s not quite as creamy. But it doesn’t matter., If it was the same, we’d have no reason to go out and treat ourselves every once in a while. Besides, it’s not about mere imitation anymore. It’s about Mom taking something we love and making it her own because she loves to cook and loves to play around with recipes until she gets it just right. More often than not, what is “just right” for us is much different from the dish she set out to imitate. And that’s totally fine with us.
My mom loves experimenting with recipes, whether she’s trying to imitate something we ate at a restaurant or creating something entirely new. She actually started imitating and building on recipes long before any of us kids even realized it. My brother, sister, and I had tried pasta con broccoli many years before we knew that restaurants carried it. We’ve tried several restaurants’ versions over the years, but my mom’s-made with pasta shells, broccoli, mushrooms, and clams-is still the best out there.
Recently, she’s started making ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches on toast for breakfast. The other day my younger brother told her she should move to New York, open one of those vending stands, and sell her breakfast sandwiches. They’re that good.
I, on the other hand, do not experiment while cooking. I don’t cook that much at all, actually, not even your standard, laid out right there on the page recipes. If I can stick it in the microwave, I’m good.
But there’s just something about that home cooked taste. Even if Mom starts out trying to imitate something we’ve eaten at a restaurant, she always manages to make it taste even better because it’s homemade. Maybe one of these days I’ll pick up some of her cooking tips or try to figure some out on my own.
As we braced for the major snow and ice storm earlier this week, Mom went to the grocery store to stock up on lunch meat, cheese, vegetables, and other things we could eat cold if the power went out. And now we’ve got 1 pound of mozzarella that she’s not quite sure what to do with. Sure, we could cut it into bite-sized blocks and eat it that way or with crackers and hard salami, but we always do that. So now she’s on a mission to turn that block of mozzarella into one of our favorite guilty pleasures when we eat out, fried cheese. We’ve tried the frozen cheese sticks before, but now she wants to try her hand at making the real thing. And I know she’ll figure it out. She always does.
Now if only she’d be willing to look past its appearance and try making a version of CiCi’s macaroni and cheese pizza. Mmmm.
My family doesn’t eat out that much. My mom likes to come home from work and cook supper. She loves to cook. We only go out to eat on a rare special occasion. Birthday dinners are usually cooked at home, which is more than fine with us kids.
The only other time we eat out is if we’re already out doing something. We hardly ever leave the house just to go to a restaurant, but if we’re already out running errands or something, we might stop by our favorite local Italian restaurant or run through a drive-through.
Which I think is how it started.
We used to eat at Taco Bell more than we do now. There wasn’t really any particular reason for this; it’s just one of the cluster of fast-food restaurants that basically makes up our little town, so it was always on the way home from pretty much anywhere we might have been.
Then I got food poisoning. It was a fairly minor case as food poisoning goes, and we never determined for sure that that’s even what it was, but it all seemed awfully coincidental. I don’t think I’ve been to a Taco Bell since. I can’t even say that that’s why, but I’m sure it factors in there somewhere.
But my sister loved their chilitos. And I loved their tacos within a taco. (I know that’s not what they’re called, but that’s what I’ve always thought of them as: a hard taco wrapped in a soft taco.) So my mom went to work. The chilitos were easy: Just get a tortilla shell, spoon some chili into it, sprinkle on some shredded mozzarella, wrap it up, and stick it in the microwave. Strictly imitation, except way yummier because they’re made fresh, from the microwave right to our plates.
The tacos within a taco proved more of a challenge because they involved making a hard taco with all the fixings, wrapping it in a tortilla shell, and grilling it on the stove without it falling apart everywhere. To this day, Mom says they’re a pain to make and will only make them every so often. But they’re yummy. Oh, are they yummy. And Mom did it one better with the tacos within a taco. There’s no imitation here; they’re her own creation based loosely on something we kids loved at a fast food restaurant.
McDonald’s breakfast burritos and breakfast sandwiches came next. My brother loved their sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits, and my sister loved their breakfast burritos. But I always found the biscuits too hard and crumbly. So again my mom set to work in the kitchen, and now quite often we wake to the sounds and smells of sausage and bacon frying. She’ll scramble up a skillet of cheese eggs, fry some bacon or sausage, and stick some biscuits in the oven. Then, she’ll cut the biscuits in half, spoon some of the cheese eggs onto each biscuit, top each one with a strip of bacon or a sausage round, and put the other biscuit halves back on top. There’s nothing like fresh, warm, fluffy sausage or bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits in the morning.
When Kentucky Fried Chicken came out with their snackers, my dad told me I had to try them. I did, and they were yummy. No, they were really yummy. But, like I said, my family doesn’t eat out that much. So we didn’t find that many opportunities to drop by KFC for a couple snackers.
Enter my mom and her love for cooking, and before long we were eating homemade snackers.
Shortly after that, McDonald’s came out with their chicken wraps. Now we’ve almost always got the makings for a wrap at home. At first it was the standard chicken and ranch rap, the same concept as McDonald’s, only homemade. But since then we’ve branched out to turkey and bacon wraps, ham and cheese wraps, and chicken wraps with salsa.
Eventually, Mom moved on to dishes that were slightly more complicated. As a family, I don’t think we’ve ever gone to any restaurant that could really be called fancy. About the most fancy restaurant we frequent is Rich & Charlie’s, an Italian restaurant with three locations near where we live. And we usually only go there for special occasions: a graduation, a major birthday, or some other kind of celebration.
But oh do I love their tortellini. And before that it was their cheese stuffed manicotti.
Working with these recipes wasn’t like working with fast food; these dishes were more complicated and used all kinds of spices. There were the ingredients Mom could easily see: the peas and prosciutto in the tortellini, the ricotta cheese in the manicotti. But most of the spices she had to determine by taste.
And it worked. It worked even better than we thought it would. No, the tortellini dish isn’t exactly like it is at Rich & Charlie’s; the flavor of the sauce is a bit different, and it’s not quite as creamy. But it doesn’t matter., If it was the same, we’d have no reason to go out and treat ourselves every once in a while. Besides, it’s not about mere imitation anymore. It’s about Mom taking something we love and making it her own because she loves to cook and loves to play around with recipes until she gets it just right. More often than not, what is “just right” for us is much different from the dish she set out to imitate. And that’s totally fine with us.
My mom loves experimenting with recipes, whether she’s trying to imitate something we ate at a restaurant or creating something entirely new. She actually started imitating and building on recipes long before any of us kids even realized it. My brother, sister, and I had tried pasta con broccoli many years before we knew that restaurants carried it. We’ve tried several restaurants’ versions over the years, but my mom’s-made with pasta shells, broccoli, mushrooms, and clams-is still the best out there.
Recently, she’s started making ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches on toast for breakfast. The other day my younger brother told her she should move to New York, open one of those vending stands, and sell her breakfast sandwiches. They’re that good.
I, on the other hand, do not experiment while cooking. I don’t cook that much at all, actually, not even your standard, laid out right there on the page recipes. If I can stick it in the microwave, I’m good.
But there’s just something about that home cooked taste. Even if Mom starts out trying to imitate something we’ve eaten at a restaurant, she always manages to make it taste even better because it’s homemade. Maybe one of these days I’ll pick up some of her cooking tips or try to figure some out on my own.
As we braced for the major snow and ice storm earlier this week, Mom went to the grocery store to stock up on lunch meat, cheese, vegetables, and other things we could eat cold if the power went out. And now we’ve got 1 pound of mozzarella that she’s not quite sure what to do with. Sure, we could cut it into bite-sized blocks and eat it that way or with crackers and hard salami, but we always do that. So now she’s on a mission to turn that block of mozzarella into one of our favorite guilty pleasures when we eat out, fried cheese. We’ve tried the frozen cheese sticks before, but now she wants to try her hand at making the real thing. And I know she’ll figure it out. She always does.
Now if only she’d be willing to look past its appearance and try making a version of CiCi’s macaroni and cheese pizza. Mmmm.