I’m no Rachel Ray

I can’t remember exactly when my husband and I decided to stop giving each other physical gifts for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas.

I know it was decades after, with glowing eyes, he presented me a multi-layered dress encrusted with lace from Mexico that made me look like a 12-months pregnant cake topper.

And our decision had nothing to do with loving each other less, spending fewer dollars or even going green.

It’s just that we both felt that we had enough, that if we really wanted something and could afford it, we’d buy it for ourselves.

We do gift each other though—with songs, poetry, handmade cards and our skills and talents.

That’s how I found myself a few nights ago, attempting to make a meal lifted from the Rachel Ray show.

Steve had seen Rachel preparing it and said, “I’d like to have that sometime.” (At least I assumed he was referring to the meal!)

With his birthday coming up I volunteered to make the entire meal for him as my gift even though cooking for me is neither a skill nor a talent. I’m no Rachel Ray.

But since I’m Lynn, I tend to enthusiastically apply my many idiosyncrasies to cooking just as I do to crafting, singing or child raising.

For instance, I rarely follow directions (in life or in cooking). I tend to look at a recipe as a suggested starting point even if I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

And I’m unlikely to purchase all the listed ingredients, (though the ones I do are organic as often as I can find them).

So for instance, the recipe I’m writing about called for 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce. You’re kidding, right? I’m going to buy a bottle of this stuff which we’ll probably never use again, for a quarter of a cup? That’s not happening.

Instead, I googled “substitute for Worcestershire sauce,” and was delighted to find universal agreement on the sub—soy sauce—which I had!

Anyway, I set out to make Steve’s choice: Sliced Steak with Horseradish Gravy and Potato and Watercress Hash. (If you’re going to read the rest of this, you’ll probably want to zip through the recipe so you can see what I’m referring to.)

Fast forward to the end of the meal when he’d eaten it all and licked his lips. (See last photo in this post.)

“Uh, that was very good, but it wasn’t what I wanted.”

“What?”

“Nope, that’s not what I saw on the show. Yes, it was horseradish gravy on sliced steak, but what’s with the ‘hash’—he winced when he said the word like a lemon had just exploded in his mouth—the meal I saw had a spinach stuffed tomato on the side.”

Oops.

So I cooked the wrong recipe. Add that to all the things that went awry while trying to put it together:

I’ve never watched Rachel so I can’t say for sure, but I doubt, when cooking one of her “simple” meals, her counter ever looks like this:

The store didn’t have baby Yukon gold potatoes. I bought the smallest ones I could find, but there was no way I was going to get them into one layer in the skillet (which, by the way, another uh oh, is not cast iron). As a result, they never turned “crispy.” So I single layered them on a cookie sheet and put them under the broiler. Of course a few burned, but not enough to matter. Broiling also “crisped up” the watercress which I’m sure would make Rachel turn right over in her grave were she not still here with us, but I actually loved this goof since I’m a sucker for crispy even when there’s no flavor. (Once when I was in Indonesia, I ate crispy grasshoppers. They weren’t the worst thing I’d ever eaten—until I found out what they were.)

I didn’t have “stock,” but I did have bouillon cubes which one is supposed to pour boiling water over to dissolve. I was in a hurry and used tap water. The cube sat on top of the water looking at me as if to say, “If you’re not going to make the water any hotter, then I’m certainly not going to dissolve.” I mashed it with a fork, but no luck. Ended up fishing out the mush, then waiting for water to boil which threw off whatever vain hope I’d had that everything would be ready to eat at the same time.

I must have dropped the whisk into the sauce at least eight time. That sucker spent more time coated in horseradish than the meat did!

Honestly, I doubted Rachel’s sanity around putting nutmeg on the potatoes. (You assume correctly that I didn’t buy fresh nutmeg, but sprinkled from a can that’s been on the shelf of every house we’ve lived in over the past quarter century. In my defense, it still smells like nutmeg and I used extra.) Turned out to taste surprisingly good although personally I kept looking for the slice of apple pie hidden somewhere on my plate.

There were one or two other missteps of which I am not proud, but in the end I got it all on the together. Here’s Rachel’s plate:

and here’s mine:

In the end, Steve was happy with the meal. He finished it. (Of course he’s been known to finish off 22-day-old fish blooming with mold from the back of the fridge because he can’t stand to see anything going to waste.)

But while I’m no Rachel Ray, evidently, being Lynn is good enough!

Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson are mother and daughter and authors of Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family, and founders of Green Halloween®.