Kitchen Tip: Trust yourself

I think that this is sometimes a hard concept to grasp when cooking - Trust you instincts. If you are reading a recipe and something doesn't seem right - it probably isn't. Now I'm not necessarily saying the recipe is flawed - it may be... but we all have individual tastes and know what we like and what we don't.

Shortly after Hubby and I were married we bought a whole turkey (it was super cheap and we were trying to save money.) I made the turkey and had TONS of leftovers so was searching for recipes to make. I found a turkey soup recipe I thought I'd try. This recipe was a basic noodle soup recipe except it called for tomatoes. I read it and thought, no that's not going to taste good. Unfortunately I had not learned to listen to that instinct completely so I put in a can of tomatoes just like the recipe said. My instinct was right and the soup was not so great. In fact I don't think we ate all of it. Of course at the time we both were not such great fans of tomatoes (I started to crave tomatoes with my first pregnancy and now can eat them just fine.) I've done a lot better at listening to that voice, but I still have some times when I ignore it.

One recent example deals with making a crust for a chocolate cheesecake.

 I'd have shared the recipe yesterday but the photos were no where near ready to post - I'll be sharing it next week though! The part I did not listen to my instincts about: the crust - well half of the crust. I decided to try using chocolate wafer cookies. When I went to buy them I had a nagging feeling it wasn't going to be so good. I bought them anyway and used them to make the crust. Needless to say the crust wasn't such a great part of the cake.

So trust those instincts while you are cooking!