chomp! By Suus

Since I am not a professional recipe writer, I don’t know what standards are used with regards to portion sizes and such. I also cook using a “one pinch of this, two pinches of that” type of system, meaning that I rarely use measuring cups or scales. And I don’t even own any measuring spoons!

To make it easier on you, I’ll try to explain my not-a-system a little bit, so that you hopefully won’t have too much trouble if you try to use one of my recipes.

On portion sizes

Let me tell you first that I’m not a big eater. This is not to say that I eat very little, but rather that I tend to consume fairly small portions. For example, a recipe for 2 from a regular cookbook can usually feed my mother (also a small eater) and me two nights in a row.

Marbles is what I would consider an average eater. That’s why I’ll use her as my guide on discerning portion sizes when I can. Unfortunately she’s not always around, but when she is I promise to watch her like a hawk! Because everybody loves it when their eating habits are being scrutinized, right?

While my dad is by no means a glutton, he can eat more than I can in one sitting. Whenever we go grocery shopping together he gets a little nervous at my assessment that “we won’t need pasta with that, right? And one of those sausages is totally enough for us both!”

This has lead me to implement a debatable system for gauging portion sizes: 1 “Dad portion” is about 1 1/2 “Marbles portion” and more or less 2 “Me portions.” But it’s probably best if you gauge for yourself whether a recipe will be sufficient for you and whoever will be eating with you based on the ingredients listed.

On measurements

So I pretty much don’t measure except for by sight and taste. I generally have an idea of how much I’ve used more or less, but when I say that I added “about a cup of water” I probably used the closest available tea cup and added water until the consistency looked right to me. For tablespoons I use actual tablespoons, and the same goes for teaspoons.

While I am trying to be a bit more precise when I cook something to blog about, quantities aren’t set in stone.

On cooking times

I have found that cooking times can vary depending on many factors, some of which will forever remain a mystery to me. I always check what’s happening inside my pot or oven, and will cook things until they reach the required level of “doneness.” Like my measurements, the cooking times I give aren’t set in stone. I prefer to tell you to grill an eggplant until the flesh is soft and the skin blackened, rather than saying this will take a certain amount of time.

Since my recipes are usually the result of  lots of trial and error, I think the best way to approach them is to see them as guidelines. I’m no Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver, but just a chick who likes to cook. And in any case, even Jamie yammers on about a “handful” of this and a “slosh” of that, so I think we should be fine.