Recipes

This weekend, I rediscovered an InstaPot recipe book that someone gave us. I haven't cooked from it ever, but as I leafed through it yesterday, I found an Italian Wedding Soup recipe that I planned to make today for dinner.

I've never made Italian Wedding soup in my InstaPot, but I had all the ingredients for this version of the dish, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. As I was prepping everything, I had some differing thoughts about how the recipe was guiding me to make this soup, but I prepared everything as instructed. Once the soup was done, I tasted it, and my suspicions about the recipe were affirmed.

I should have approached this dish from the place of knowing that I have gained from cooking over the years.

Me with my Hexclad non-stick fry pan, a gift from the company to all participants who completed the James Beard Foundation's Women Entrepreneurial Leadership program.

If you're new here, you may not know that I didn't start cooking for myself and my family until almost eight years ago. I'm 42. I was a little late to the game of learning how to cook, and I still have a lot to learn.

The outcome of this disappointing dish reminded me of the 'knowing' we all have inside of us.

So often, we're looking to follow someone else's recipe for our life, our success, our Sunday night Italian Wedding InstaPot soup. And what we don't take into account is that we all bring different life experiences to the table that will make one person's recipe very bland for the next.

The family eating this evening's initially disappointing soup... I asked Nick to make it better, and he did.

When you're not as secure, like me, as a relatively new cook in the kitchen, it will be easy to read someone else's recipe, try to apply it to your life, and expect more outstanding results than what your 'knowing' would have yielded.

But here's the thing – we all know a lot and, most importantly, we know ourselves. What has worked for someone else will likely not work for you in the same way.

My industry friend doesn't believe in text on food pictures but I know that our audience and those we want to attract to our brand like some narration. Also, we have decided to extend pie ordering for two more days! There's still a little time to be a dessert hero. Pick ups are available at all Harlem stores.

If someone has achieved something you have not, it's easy to want to defer to their success blueprint to achieve their results. Often, many of the details from their blueprint are transferable. But not everything.

I had a meeting with an industry friend whom I sought counsel from about how to better run our Instagram account. She and her husband own and operate an iconic restaurant in the city, and she, ten years my senior, has been managing her very successful food-focused Instagram account from the beginning.

I sought her advice because she has achieved growing her account into a sales-generating platform that almost 400K people follow.

We have not achieved such results.

Her recipe for Instagram success is not ours because we have two different brands with different impact goals. However, we do both have in common the need to drive traffic to our restaurants so that we can continue to exist. I have applied the majority of her advice and have made slight modifications where necessary.

We blindly copy recipes when we lack confidence or strong technique.

And the reality is, we have to take stock of all the steps that are being recommended, consider our past experiences and bigger picture goals, and be open to making some slight revisions to what's being recommended.

This is the art of following any recipe.

Petrushka
Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach