To Taste

If you look at any of my recipes, you will notice two things; I often state I changed the recipe to suit our tastes or season to suit your tastes. What does that mean? How do you know what your tastes are? Never fear, because I am about to attempt to explain it. 

For almost 28 years now, I have been cooking for our family. Over those many years, I have learned what we like and what we don't like as far as food is concerned. I learned a lot by trying new recipes, then we would dissect what we liked and didn't like. I would try the  recipe again and continued to fine tune it until I had gotten it just right. By doing this, I have learned what spices to add or not to add. 

We like our food salted. I know, I know. Isn't salt bad for you? It is in large amounts, but we avoid large amounts of salt because we don't eat a lot of processed foods. I add reasonable amounts to the food we do eat, so I don't believe it is harming us or our blood pressure in anyway. 

DH likes black pepper, lots of black pepper. I pepper most everything we eat, but often it is not enough for DH. So, he adds more until it suits him. That way DD and I aren't on black pepper overload. 

We find real garlic to strong, but like garlic salt. So in place of garlic and salt, I use garlic salt in a lot of recipes. DD and I even use it to salt sugar peas or lima beans with. Delish! 

The spices and seasonings we use most often include chili powder, cumin, paprika, basil, oregano, onion powder, parsley, a little cayenne pepper, and a few red pepper flakes. Most of my recipes will have them listed as ingredients. Of these, our least favorites are cumin and oregano. We find them to be a little over powering. When a recipe calls for these two, I cut back on the amounts.

When it comes to baking, there is really only one spice I like to use and that is cinnamon. I am not an all spice, pumpkin pie spice, and ginger kind of person. I like simple flavorings when it comes to baked goods. Anything else just takes over the taste and ruins the baked good. 

By trying and experimenting with recipes, we have found a few things we as a family do not like. Of the herbs and spices, we don't like nutmeg or cilantro. We also don't like soy sauce type products.

There has always been something about pumpkin pies and sweet potato pies that have just turned my stomach. It wasn't until we were out eating cheesecake somewhere and I tasted that taste again. It was then I realized the crust had nutmeg in it and that was the very taste I couldn't stand about a pumpkin pie. So you won't find nutmeg in our house.

Now, cilantro is another story. We as a family don't like it. We were trying a new Mexican type dish. It suggested serving it with a cilantro and lime sour cream. Needless to say, we weren't impressed. It was just icky!   

We aren't big fans of oriental food. DH and DD like it more than I do, but they both like rice and I don't. However, none of us are crazy about the flavor of soy sauce, not to mention the fact that soy had MSG in it, which gives me migraines. Instead, I use Worcestershire sauce. 

Now I hope you know what I mean about changing recipes to our tastes or season to taste. It has taken me years to develop what exactly our tastes are and it require experimenting. So maybe, this will help you start leaning what your family likes and doesn't like when it comes to seasoning your dishes. 

Enjoying making simple great food and eating it!