Betty, she CRAZY.

In anticipation of Jon's return (he gets home tonight!), I am feeling excited to cook again and eat delicious food we have to think about and spend time creating. I was thinking about the weeks to come and the dishes we can cook and eat together and decided to flip through some cookbooks in search of some menu ideas. We have an array of cookbooks, including Betty Crocker's classic cookbook. We received the 'bridal edition' of this book as a gift in July and I haven't given it much of a look as Jon left soon after we were married and I haven't done much cooking since that time. I've been surviving off of assembly food - very little heat required. It has been nutritious enough, but I'm over it.

The cookbook is solid. It's a hardcover edition of the mean-machine cooking that Betty does...and this woman knows what she is talking about! I began amused, flipping through the pages looking at the pictures. One page in particular caught my attention, a page with instructions on cutting food titled "Helpful How-To's." 12 bright colored inch-sized square pictures cover each side of a two-page spread giving an illustrated example demonstrating what each of the fancy words for "cut" mean. Chop, julienne, mince, crush, dice, grate, etc. This is followed by 12 pages of cooking glossary terms. Woah.

Another highlight were the pictures showing food items in three stages (these are my terms):

Mediocre: Betty claimed these had some sort of defect like "the butter was too soft." They looked delightful to me.

Perfect: This was a perfectly done food item with no mishaps. The description was "there are no problems with this cookie/pie crust/muffin." 

And then there was:

The Horrible Screwup: Baked goods with too much flour, others that had been in the oven too long, etc.

They all looked just fine to me, but Betty could distinguish the good, from the bad, from the ugly. I would've devoured each and every one of them. 

This cookbook gives directions on how to do essentially everything in the kitchen. It made me want to read the entire book to learn all the tricks and become a pro and then start a blog about cooking each of the dishes to perfection and eating them (wait, did someone make a movie about this?). Egg separating was one of the tasks outlined in the
"Getting Started" section. Using a tool that looks like a simple measuring cup with open slots in the bottom is how Betty separates her eggs. My mom had this exact tool in the kitchen drawer when I was little. I never knew until my encounter with Betty's cookbook that this is what that thing is for - I played with it in the sink and never thought about its actual purpose other than entertaining me as I splashed around in the water, filling it up and watching the water drain out slowly. I've always separated eggs in my hand.

I then found out that Betty Crocker is not a person, just a corporation with that name. Betty was chosen because it was viewed as a cheery, all-American name. Crocker was paired with the name Betty in honor of a man with this last name who was a company director. I imagined an actual Betty in the kitchen creating all of these delicious items in the pictures. It isn't so. So she's not crazy. I think I might be...six hours to go...

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