I asked this question on my new Cooking Community Forum (Is Anyone In A Cooking Rut?) and wanted to post it on this blog so those of you who are not part of the community yet can leave your comments. I hear from so many of you who feel you are in a “cooking rut” and are looking for ways to climb out.

What I mean by cooking rut is you tend to prepare the same five, six, eight recipes night after night, week after week. These may be tried and true recipes that you know work or your kids will eat but now everyone is tired of and looking for something new.

It is my belief that before you can get out of any rut, you have to know the reasons why you’re there in the first place. So I am looking for your thoughts and ideas why home cooks often find themselves in these ruts.

Some of the reasons posted at the forum include:

Lack of time and energy

Lack of appreciation

Boredom

Comfort level with a few particular recipes

Fast foods

Same ingredients on hand

Lack of planning

Lack of funds

Availability of ingredients

Picky eating habits

Inexperience

All great ideas and I’m sure we can all relate to one or more of them. So what I would like to know from those of you who read this blog:

Why do you think we find ourselves in a cooking rut from time to time and how do you suggest we get out of it?

Celebrity Chef Tour Benefiting the James Beard Foundation to Host a Delectable Evening at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel

If anyone interested in some great food for a great cause and are in the Washington, D.C area this Saturday, March 1st, you may want to check out this press release for The Celebrity Chef Tour.

Two celebrity chefs will be cooking. Chef Bertrand Chemel from Cafe Boulund fame and now the Executive Chef at 2941 Restaurant (just outside of DC in Falls Church) and Chef Norman Wade from the historic Renaissance Mayflower Hotel.

I’m hoping to interview both these chefs in the very near future on my Novice2Pro chef interview page. I’ll post a little blog note when they happen.
Here are some excerpts from the release:

(Washington, D.C.) – The Celebrity Chef Tour is thrilled to return to Washington, D.C. and bring the famed dinners of the James Beard House in New York City to the tables of the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel on Saturday, March 1st at 7pm.

The Tour, while harnessing the excitement and huge popular culture interest in all things food, benefits the James Beard Foundation, whose mission is to “celebrate, preserve and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence.”

Mirroring the coveted Beard House dinners, for which the nation’s top chefs come to prepare menus at the Foundation’s invitation, The Celebrity Chef Tour features the greatest culinary artists, creating an elevated dining experience like no other.

As such, the Celebrity Chef Tour dinner at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel on March 1st promises to delight the palates of the most discriminating epicureans. Showcasing the talents of Celebrity Chef Bertrand Chemel and hosting Executive Chef Norman Wade, the evening will begin with a reception, featuring unique hors d’oeuvres creations prepared by the chefs and complemented with carefully selected wines. An innovative, one-of-a-kind multi-course dinner will follow, accentuated by wine pairings presented by a guest Sommelier, exclusive interactions with and access to the award-winning chefs and the ability to see behind the scenes and experience the preparation of the courses.

Tickets are available to the public for $175 and can be purchased by contacting Jeff Black by telephone 720-201-1853. For more information, please visit our website at www.celebritycheftour.com.

Grams versus Ounces

The other day I answered a readers question about tomato soup baked with pastry on top. In the recipe, Chef Jenni uses grams rather than ounces and I wondered why. She is a professional baker who attended a the Orlando Culinary Academy’s Le Cordon Bleu cooking program so why was she using the metric system for measuring out ingredients? So I asked her if she always used this system and if so why. Here is how she replied,

“No, I don’t always work in the metric system, although it is really the most exacting measuring system around as far as baking is concerned. I do try to convert standard recipes as much as possible. This is easy with our Detecto Scale. You can change the unit from grams to ounces to pounds and ounces to pounds and 1/10ths of pounds. Very convenient.

One ounce equals roughly 28 grams. I think it’s much more accurate to call for 14 grams of an ingredient than 1/2 ounce, mainly because your margin for error is greater–your scale might only measure ounces to the nearest 1/4 ounce, leaving about a + or - 3.5 grams error in measuring.

It’s mainly a personal preference, but it does help with standardization and consistency in the final product. Honestly, I prefer weights (either metric or standard) over cups any day.

In culinary school, we always weighed, mostly using a balance scale and then getting digital scales later in the program. Most of the recipes were written in pounds and ounces. The metric conversions were woefully inaccurate, and when I was there, they were talking about updating all the metric measurements.

We also learned that there are three liquids you can measure or weigh (a pint is a pound the world around) accurately: water, whole milk and whole eggs. Most other liquids will vary by a few grams or fractions of ounces either side of that pint=pound standard depending on the density.”

Cooking Conversions

By the way, I have a page on my web site called Cooking Conversions that has two easy to use converters. You can change ounces to cups, teaspoon to tablespoon and more with the first one and just about any conversion with the second. Give it a try.

Cooking Apron for Those Senior Moment

And don’t forget to check out my recently revised Senior Moments Cooking Apron for those times when you can’t remember how many teaspoons in an ounce or cups in a quart. It also has RG’s suggested internal temperatures for cooking beef, pork, lamb, veal & chicken. No more running to your cookbook to look up what the temperature should be for rare, medium rare, medium and medium well done.

You can purchase one for yourself or friends at CafePress.com. They make great gifts too!