First, I'm a visual person. I want to see what my food is going to look like and everything on Pinterest starts with a photo. Second, most of the recipes are posted by home cooks like me so they typically have few ingredients and minimal prep time. Nothing against Martha Stewart, but not all my food needs to look like it could be served in a restaurant, especially when I'm trying to manage it after a long work day. Third, Pinterest lets you see what your friends are trying and they will give you an honest review of a recipe.
As great as Pinterest is in many ways, it has some pitfalls. It's very easy for the average person to post a recipe from their blog. Unfortunately, not every blogger knows how to write a usable recipe. And in some cases, you need to read between the lines a bit to know what you're getting.
One of my first Pinterest "fails" was the 3 Meat Pizza Casserole recipe. The link makes it look pretty tasty and unassuming.
But if you follow the recipe to the letter, it looks more like this:
While it tasted great, It's seriously an ENORMOUS amount of food. It was a full inch taller than the casserole dish. It took over a week of eating it twice a day to get rid of the leftovers. What did I learn from my experience with this recipe? When the author says things like "this would make a great dish for a graduation party" and "My oldest boy took one look at it-it did not make the 5 minutes" you should ONLY be using the recipe if you are preparing to feed an entire hockey team. Last time I checked, there are two people in my house and while we both love our hockey, this was too much for us. Cut the ingredients in half and you'd have something workable for a normal family meal.
This evening's Pinterest adventure was Sweet And Spicy Bacon Chicken. The list of ingredients was pretty simple.
4 chicken breasts cut in thirds (12 pieces)
Bacon slices
salt and pepper to taste
garlic powder
chili powder
brown sugar
Unfortunately that's about ALL the recipe told you. No amounts on the garlic powder, chili powder or brown sugar. Not such a big deal in the case of the brown sugar since you're just using it to coat the chicken like a breading. BIG ISSUE with the garlic and chili powder since the taste of the dish is impacted by how much you use.
Now some of you reading may be the kind of experienced cooks that intuitively can figure out how much of each you should use. I AM NOT. I'm all for tweaking a recipe to perfect it once you've tried it, but it's a little hard when you don't even know where to start, right?
I was using half the amount of chicken (lesson on portion control learned from the pizza casserole applied here!) so I used a tablespoon of garlic powder and a teaspoon of chili powder and hoped for the best. My two cut chicken breasts fit nicely in a 9x13 pan, but the the author of this recipe seems to think 4 breasts would fit and I couldn't see it happening. Is there some secret "Pack The Casserole Dish" contest out there I don't know about?
Anyway, the dish turned out just fine. It was much more sweet than spicy, so I may have needed more chili powder. Luckily everything tastes better with bacon. The funniest part of the evening was my boyfriend looking at his plate and saying "What is it?" In the romantic dining room lighting, he thought I was serving bacon wrapped hot dogs!
As you venture forth to search new recipes on Pinterest, be prepared for just about anything. Whatever you do, have fun in the kitchen -- and take lots of pictures!
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