Hi everyone. I am sorry to interrupt our Jan. series on celebrity home chefs, but I needed to address a comment that came in yesterday in response to the Flan Ruso recipe in the last celebrity home chef post. Here is the comment:
Alma,
Did you see the ingrediants for this recipe? Looks like it was made up by Kraft test kitchens circa 1955: canned pears? gelatin? marshmallows?
Love you dearly, but this recipe is pretty contrary to what your brand stands for….
And of course you know that Russians have never heard of marshmallows and make their own gelatin from chicken or pork…and only use it for savory, not sweet dishes.
As a russo/latinophile I am offended by this recipe! 🙂
That said, I have a wonderful and econmical traditional russian recipe for boiled cow tongue with homemade creamy horseradish 🙂
I have a few things to say so bear with me…
First off, I want to clarify Take Back the Kitchen’s mission: Helping people overcome obstacles to cooking. TBK is not a blog solely about healthy food and healthy cooking. My goal as a therapist and chef is to help people overcome the common and individual obstacles that keep them from cooking so that they may :
Have a healthier life for themselves and their families
Save money and time
Be connected to people and experiences from their pasts
And most of all, nurture the ones they love and care for with home made food
If you are followers of the blog, you will know that I am a firm believer in moderation. I don’t believe that most people can stick to a consistently healthy life style if there is not a bit of indulgence, nor should they! Junk food tastes good! Why should we deprive ourselves of some marshmallows every once in a while? Which leads me to Perla’s Flan recipe.
Not only do I love that Perla’s recipe does indeed sound like it was created in the 1950s, it probably was since it was her grandmother’s! I can’t know for sure, but I imagine making this flan reminds Perla of her grandmother and our collective past because of the use of cream cheese, marshmallows and gelatin.
Since Perla reads TBK, I imagine she is a healthy eater and does not eat Flan Ruso three meals a day. I imagine she makes this recipe because it makes her friends and family happy. I imagine that she serves it at parties and everyone comments on how delicious it is and that puts a smile on her face. Her grandmother would have smiled too.
My hope for TBK has always been that it is a site where you all feel supported in ALL of your cooking endeavors, not judged because of the types of cooking with which you are experimenting. I may be wrong, but I doubt that people who are content eating junk food all day are followers of TBK.
I imagine that the people reading this blog at least aspire to cook healthier for themselves and their families. Even if that means they get gratification from making Flan Ruso every day, I would like to believe that that is the start of healthy cooking confidence and that one day they will be making Kale chips, maybe even in 2011.
Please, let’s all support the chefs and celebrate the recipes here. There is room on this site for all people and all recipes.
Much love and support to all of you!
Love,
Alma
5 Responses
Hear Hear
"I don't believe that most people can stick to a consistently healthy life style if there is not a bit of indulgence, nor should they!"
More to the point – moderation IS healthy! Food avoidance, food fear, and shame surrounding eating are NOT healthy.
And, by the way, what's wrong with a tried and true recipe from the 50s? I hosted a New Year's Day brunch recently and made spinach-cheddar wheels with puff pastry (among other things) – very 50s! But easy, yummy and plenty popular. I could almost feel Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke show anyone?) looking over my shoulder and smiling. 🙂
Moderation is healthy. Over-indulgence or no indulgence is not. At a time when people can be so rigid about good food bad food, its great see you defend moderation in eating and the occasional indulgence.
Lime jello with cottage cheese and pinneapple… YUM!