Dear Jasmina

In case you did not already know, I have a sweet tooth and I’m quite sure it comes from a long line of sweet-tothed ancestors, including a great-grandfather on my dad’s side who apparently wouldn’t leave the table without a little something to end the meal. It has corrupted Christian to some extent and has always assured that our pantry was well stocked with sugar and flour, and our freezer always contained butter, not margarine. When I married Christian I was by no means a cook, assuring my friends that I qualified for cooking classes. I remember when I was young deciding to make cheesecake, or buttertarts… the whole family heard of it, because, IT WAS A BIG DEAL. During our first six months of our mariage, Christian took care of most of the cooking. I ventured upon muffins, cake and cookies. Meat terrified me, but I loved chopping vegetables. I still do. Eventually, because I liked having people over for supper, or brunch, I decided to read recipes and graduated from Company’s Coming “The Rookie Cook” to the highest rated recipes on Food Network. And although I still can’t bring myself to skin and de-bone chicken, I’ve managed to earn the reputation of “producer of different meals”, wherein “different” for my inlaws usually means “unexpected”. Not that four and twenty blackbirds are baked into my pies and sing when opened as in the Nursery Rhyme, but rather that I try to make something new each time. Afterall, there are so many wonderfull recipes, why would I want to repeat any, when I could get amnesia at 42 and not have tried a quarter of the excuses to be a glutton?

So, yesterday, Christian’s parents came for supper and my mother-in-law chose the menu from a new cookbook I purchased the same week. I’d purchased the book with a giftcard and heartily thank the person who indulges my recipe book collection, to Christian’s dismay. Because, you see, my handsome husband can’t see why I need more than one cookbook when I haven’t even exhausted all its recipes. And also because I don’t have a grain of culinary creativity and absolutely cannot invent recipes from the top of my head. Although I could style the creations if absolutely necessary.

Back to yesterday. The cookbook. Did you want to know which one it was? Sure. It was Weekend Cooking by Ricardo. Remember him? We’re friends right now, although yesterday, I nearly broke up with him. The menu was a delicious Cream of Celery Soup with Walnuts and Blue Cheese, except that my mother-in-law convinced me to skip the blue cheese altogether, she cannot stand it, thank-you-very-much. The main dish was Rack of Veal Provençal consisting of a rack of veal on a bed of tomatoes and zucchini. Except that the meat markets in Winnipeg do not sell racks of veal. So it was substituted with a rack of pork instead. Christian’s mother declared it was the best thing I’d ever made. She’s very sweet you know. And then there was a Gratin Dauphinois which is really a glorified recipe for scalloped potatoes, containing Emmenthaler cheese. That’s the secret, if you want to know… Emmenthaler cheese. With cream. And that was also declared the best scalloped potatoes my mother-in-law ever tasted in her ENTIRE life. Yes, she’s very sweet! And becasue of that, I decided upon Ricardo’s Double Lemon Pie, to temper all that sweetness, and because Christian’s mom loves citrusy deserts. And I love to please. And because, up until now, I’ve assumed that deserts were my specialty.

Things started taking a turn for the worse when the pie crust would not work. Pie crusts are terribly finnicky things and I’m still far from mastering the technique, although I don’t avoid occasions to try for the sake of practice. But it wouldn’t work. I was either too hard or too soft, and if you are there shaking your head with a suggestion for me, I invite you over to teach me. But it was late at night when I partially gave up, resigning to try in the morning. In the morning, I got discouraged, and was certain that all that rolling and refrigerating and re-rolling would make it tough. So Tenderflake came to the rescue. Do you know that little voice in your head that you occasionally ignore? It spoke to me when I was making the filling. It said: “Don’t you think that’s a whole lot of lemon juice?” and I shushed it because I have a tendency to be very stubborn when it comes to following a recipe exactly as it is written. And Ricardo wrote: “Juice citrus fruits and set aside”. He didn’t specify the amount of juice and it so happened I’d come upon the juiciest lemons in all of Manitoba. They’re at the Great Canadian Superstore off of Pembina if your wondering. They killed my Double-Lemon Pie and made a sweet little grandma pucker. And there you have it… my first failed desert. Somewhere, something mischievous is scoring a point for cooking over baking and I’d like to wrestle it to the ground and say “Not fair!”.

Was that all a little too long? Sorry… I got carried away. Here’s a ccokie for your trouble.