I have made
a kind of New Year’s resolution for 2016, to make every recipe in my 2006 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook (and
blog it!). This is a general-cookery-and-kitchen-things cookbook that my mother
gave me for Christmas several years ago. It contains hundreds of recipes (an
accurate count is now on my priorities list) and less specific advice regarding
such topics as buying cuts of meat, serving large numbers of people, and useful
kitchen equipment.
This
resolution was largely inspired by the book (I haven’t yet read) and movie (I
saw a couple of years ago on a trip with Charlie), Julie and Julia. The main plot of that story is that the author,
Julie Powell, undertakes to complete every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a
single year. I have not yet settled on a time limit for my project, and I
suspect there are more than the 500-some-odd recipes of Julia Child’s book in
my book by the corporation known as Betty Crocker*.
* I’m
pretty sure Betty Crocker was the name of a real person who was at some point
involved in that company’s history. But this cookbook was not written by a single person, anymore than Julia Child’s book was
the work of her alone.
Recipe #1:
Banana Bread (pg. 68)
I am
spending New Year’s – December 26 through December 5 – at our family Cottage on
Lake Skootamatta in eastern Ontario. This is a wonderful property that I have
many, many fond memories of, and after talking about this for years, I have
brought Charlie here for our winter vacation. This cottage lacks few amenities
of home, but on that short list of lacks are a few of the ingredients for this
recipe. I decided to tackle it as my first recipe anyway because it uses few
eggs (we’re not yet running low, but Charlie and I do eat many eggs when we’re
together) and it finishes off our rather sad banana supply.
We had only
1 banana left, and the recipe calls for three, so I just cut everything else to
a third. Other missing ingredients include buttermilk (substituted regular 2%
milk) and vanilla (substituted a splash of whisky). I also had to scrounge for
a baking pan, but a round Plexiglas dish served well enough.
Overall,
I’m satisfied. I’d like to try this recipe again, full-scale (the recipe calls
for 2 eggs, which are difficult to cut by thirds) and with the proper
no-substitutions ingredients.
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