How well do you know know your quests?

Recently on facebook everyone has an inclination to create a quiz about themselves. In these quizzes there are questions every twelve year old has had to answer to prove their true friendships. "What's my favorite color?" "What am I more afraid of spiders or snakes?" "What is my favorite girl name?" These are just some of the important questions only someone who is your best of friends could answer, or someone who is rather observant/overly obsessed about all things you.

As cooks, we take quizzes like this all of the time, but our scores aren't posted online for all of the facebook world to see. Whether you are cooking for your family, friends, or, like I do as a cook at a country club, complete strangers, you are constantly answering "how well you do know me?" quizzes. These quizzes are a little bit different than the ones infiltrating my minifeed on facebook.

Will the guests like a big salad with chicken on a hot summer night or will they be more fond of an outside feast of grilled burgers and hot dogs? Should I make peanut butter pie or should I bring something with a little less Anaphylactic shock potential to the work picnic? What are my 4 year old's favorite vegetables and how can I introduce him to more so his diet is balanced?

We never truly have the time or the magical little calculate button to determine how well we do on these every day cooking quizzes. An occasional fail might be obvious when your rushed and the meal was thrown together from an assortment of everything in your freezer, cupboards, and refrigerator. The key is to not lose heart and order out for the next week.

I have always felt that cooking is more about the experience. Some of my earliest memories are cooking with the women in my family. Every year my Titis (Aunts) would come over and we would pick five giant plants of basil, grate 3 things of Parmeson cheese, and taste and puree what seemed to be 500 pounds of pesto. At the end of the day my Titi Stella would make up some chicken fingers and we'd toss some of the pesto into spaghetti and have a feast. The most enjoyable moment was not the feast, even though it was always tasty, because there are plenty of good cooks in my family. The most important moment was all of the little moments that went into the finished product. It was the moment when my mom tasted the pesto and said it needed more salt and Titi Stella tasted it and said it needed more oil, but was definitely salty enough. It was the moment that Titi Carmen decided we needed something else and should go out to get more ingredients, or the moments where Titi Stella and I would realize we were the only ones working on the pesto.

I know that I am lucky to have memories like these, as not many families do things the way my family did things. As the summer months progress and things start to slow down, as corny as this is going to sound, create some memories. Take time to cook and don't worry so much about getting a 100% on the cooking quiz. The perfectionists who get 100% probably didn't giggle once over flour shooting across the kitchen or take the time to teach someone else the art of making the perfect pie crust while they made their dinner.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily