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“After vague direction upon vague direction, it dawned on me that she didn’t have a recipe. My grandmother had been winging it for 50 years.”
Meredith Leigh Knight is an award-winning writer, columnist, editor and mother of three. Read more of her humorous musings on everyday life on her blog, “Life as Leigh sees it.”
Recipes: Winging the Rolls I just made the worst meal of my life, and now I have to write about it. It all started several weeks ago when I got a text from the editor of Newnan-Coweta Magazine. Having not written a column in awhile, I was delighted to be asked if I’d like to write one on either winging it in the kitchen or following a recipe. I immediately said winging it; hence the reason my dog subsequently got a feast and the kids had a lot of dirty pots to wash after they’d eaten their “blackened” sweet potato fries. You see, I’ve never winged a recipe in my life. In fact, my second text to the editor was, “What’s the recipe?” I think his reply may have been, “Uh, you’re winging it.” Oh yeah, I’m winging it, I thought, reality hitting. “Why did you pick that one?” my husband asked. “Yeah, Dad’s the one who wings it,” the kids said, which was in large part why I picked it. I may not be much of a cook — with or without a recipe — but I know what good food tastes like, and I know the best chefs wing it. Take my grandmother, for example. Some may say cooking is chemistry, but what she did was pure magic, especially when it came to her melt-in-your-mouth homemade rolls. I don’t know how many dozens she made during the holidays, but we ate them all. Grandmama never sat down while we ate. Instead, she kept an eye on the rolls and would serve them to us piping hot from the oven. They’d be flaky, warm and irresistible, no matter how full we were. As she grew older and a little slower moving around the stove, I decided I needed to get her recipe. When I asked about how she made them, she simply told me to come early to watch. Roll making is a process — mixing the dough, kneading the dough, allowing it to rise, rolling out the dough, cutting the rolls into circles with an empty tin can and then folding them over, cooking them until they are lightly browned, buttering them with soft butter, and
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serving them with love. Sadly, I never went to watch. I never took the time to learn by doing. I wanted a recipe. Every time I asked, I’d get the same answer, “Come and see.” After she had some mini-strokes, I realized that I really needed the recipe. I insisted on it. She nodded her consent, and I took out my pen and paper and readied myself. “First, you put a pinch of salt, then a pat of butter ...” “What’s a pinch? How much is a pat?” I asked, confused. After vague direction upon vague direction, it dawned on me that she didn’t have a recipe. My grandmother had been winging it for 50 years. Fortunately for our family, my oldest daughter, who was in the eighth grade at the time, took charge. “I’ll come watch you make them, GG,” she said, and as Henny Penny would say, that’s just what she did. Not only did she get the hang of using Grandmama’s rolling pin, she wrote down the recipe to her best estimate while she was there. And she didn’t stop there. She decided to share Grandmama’s rollmaking process as her 4-H project. She stayed up late into the night mixing the dough and leaving it in the refrigerator to rise. “I’m getting up at 5:30 a.m. to roll them out and bake them,” she said. By the time I woke up, the rolls were ready, and the kitchen looked as if we’d had an indoor snow storm. My daughter was proud and covered from head to toe in flour. She took pictures of the process and presented her project, explaining to others what I had yet to learn. At the end, everyone got a taste. She won district but lost at the state level. Ultimately, she was the real winner. She learned at an early age what it means to wing it in the kitchen — and in life. I wish I had not been so focused on the recipe that I missed the lesson. NCM