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Turkish Delight Massacre

Tips and Advice - Cooking from Scratch

Written by Maureen Wood

Cooking meals for yourself and your family is a rewarding experience. It is like starting a new project every day and seeing it through to completion (everyone eats it up). It is both good for one's ego and for our task management skills. Today I realized why many people would avoid cooking from scratch.
It's not that I have never failed before it has just been a while since I have failed so miserably. It was a good wake up call as someone who writes about foodie cooking to others and a reminder that the best laid plans don't always work according to the recipe. I speak specifically of the Turkish delight I've been working on for the last few days.

Since Edmund and the White Witch in C.S. Lewis's Narnia I've been in love with this bright pink and white powdered dessert. I dreamed of making my own for years. I even went hunting and found a recipe from a reliable source.

The recipe has been sitting by my flour canister on my counter for three months. And at least once a week I would unfold the paper, read the ingredients and directions then fold it up and return it to the resting place beside the flour canister thinking to myself, "not today".

I decided this was the week to venture into the world of powdered delight and bought the extra ingredients. I went through the hassle of stirring liquid sugar for an hour, finding the right temperature, thickening, and waiting over night to finally have... well, I ended up with what amounted to pink custard instead of bright red yummy Turkish delight. Not only that. It tasted hideous. Seriously, my whole body winced.

So where is the good part of this story you might be asking? Well I learned two things about my style of cooking and ultimately the recipes I like to use and produce. First, I like simplicity and I like immediate gratification; none of this waiting until the next day crap. And finally, that I will never ever make Turkish delight again. But I'm ok with that.

This experience was a good reminder that not every recipe works out and that it is ok to fail. I can say I tried. I only wish I had taken a picture for you before it met its demise. It literally looked like the pink blob moving across my counter top.

Just as life experiences shape us into the people we are to become so does our cooking experience shape us into the foodie cooks we are to become. It was a useful exercise after the fact. My goal for you this week is to step outside your comfort zone and try something new that you wouldn't normally cook. Make sure to have a back up plan just in case!

Photo of Turkish Delight, copyright The Pink Princess, flickr

M. E. Wood is the Cooking from Scratch Editor at Foodie Momma. She lives in Eastern Ontario, Canada. If you are going to find this eclectic reader and writer anywhere it is probably at her computer. For more information visit her Squidoo Who page.