I love pig. I love pork. I love sausage. I love the way they make the sausage look like a pig in the butcher's case. I love to play with piglets. I love my cookbooks that are solely about pork. I love my McCarty pig. I love pink and white gingham because it reminds me of pigs.
You get it. I love pig. It is odd that I love the pig both frolicking and for consumption. You don't have to tell me-I am dealing with that dichotomy.
I also love to cook. I also love the Junior League. I am fortunate that this is not a dichotomy because clearly I have enough issues to address. Perhaps that is why I became involved in the great era of the JLC coobook, Seasoned To Taste: Savoring the Scenic City. I literally learned how to publish a cookbook. Isn't that amazing? It was incredibly enriching. I hope that Emma Virginia can experience something like it one day. Not only did I have such an opportunity to learn many new things, but I got to do it with the most fabulous group of girls ever. It would be impossible for me to tell you how many hours we met about the cookbook, how many events we turned into cookbook events, how many times I served family and friends cookbook recipes for testing, or how many blocks of cream cheese I purchased. Recently, I told this same group of girls that I still can not go to the store without buying at least two blocks of cream cheese. Cream cheese is the glue that holds us cookbook girls together. It's a good thing that cream cheese is sticky because we were all chiefs in the process, and it would be a fib to say that it was all cookies and cream. There were some weeks that we spent every day together editing, naming, researching and pairing recipes. Did you get a push present when you had your child? Well, I got a push present when the cookbook was published...I did carry it for well over 9 months...that counts, right?
My job on the cookbook committee focused on the recipe portion of the book. We had a committee that culled recipes upon intake and tested each one furiously. We received over 1,000 recipes and managed the tasting and testing throughout the JLC. God bless my husband-he was forced to eat five course meals many a night...I could never promise that the meal would be a hit either. We just had to get those recipes tested!!! We even had tester holidays where the menu was planned around recipes that had to be tested by the deadline. The taster ratings slips practically became a part of the silverware at our dining table. Looking back it is all quite humorous.
It would only make sense that when the cookbook testing commenced I would still be pretty focused on food. Around this time Emma Virginia decided that she really loved ham-all.the.time. Breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. I started purchasing a ham a week and testing myself on what all I could do with it. My neurosis came out in full force as I began centering all meals around our guest of the week.
Once I went to a grocery store to visit the butcher. I asked him for a ham and proceeded to tell him all that I would do with said ham. I would make ham and apple sandwiches, ham and lentil soup, red beans and rice, split pea soup, ham quiche, ham broth, etc. He was neither impressed nor amused which really hurt my feelings. I felt certain that a butcher, a man that knows his meat, would be impressed that I would use all parts of the ham! Instead he felt badly for me and offered to find me another low cost meal option. The butcher completely misunderstood! I think he felt that I was telling him that all our family could afford was a ham a week. No, no, no Mr. Butcher. He wouldn't hear it. He could give me a good price on a certain cut of beef and perhaps I could "vary" my menu.
I told him to keep his beef-I'm no ham traitor.
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