Elyse Tries her Hand at Recipe Blogging; Poor Results

I'd like to say right from the get-go that I blame Pinterest for this crap. I tried to make an interesting step-by-step guide to cooking a recipe and it just didn't work out. Below is an account of what I SHOULD have done. 




Attempted Recipe: Pasta with Sausage 
Repurposed Pinterest-Approved Female-Friendly Recipe Because All Girls are (or should be) Trying to Get Skinny by Eating Food Pictured on the Internet : Skinny Whole-Wheat Pasta with Low-Fat Free-Range Chicken Sausage (Cruelty-Free! Gluten-Free! No MSG!)

"I'm so happy to be cooking this food, I can't stand it." -not me

Scene: The kitch. 7:00 p.m., post work-day. 


Step One: Take pictures of all of your kitchen tools that you will be using, as well as pictures of the ingredients. Everybody needs to know what a Rubbermaid teaspoon and a box of pasta looks like. Cluster them all together so it looks like a little pre-cooked food family portrait. If you have a potted plant of fresh herbs, use that as a backdrop. 




Step Two:  Give a backstory on this recipe. It was passed down from generation to generation, undergoing revisions for decade diet-crazes and paranoias (bird flu, swine flu, olive oil malaria, pasta tuberculosis, etc.) Now we're ready to begin...


Step Three: Make sure you take a picture of oil in a Calphalon frying pan. This is very important because college students in their dorms, familiar only with microwave cooking, don't know how this works. (This step sponsored by Calphalon.)


Step Four:  Cut up all the vegetables. In this step, be sure to say something about how playing classical music enhances the cooking process. Bonus points awarded for obscure composers and undertones of douchiness. 


Step Five:  Get your iPhone out, because it's INSTAGRAM TIME!! Capture those frying vegetables in a nice sepia tone, or make it black-and-white, like a newspaper headline. "PEPPERS HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH HOT OIL!" Post, upload, read comments. Move phone away from oil pan. 


Step Six:  Make a comment about your choice of Ragu over Prego. Don't say "because it was cheaper" or "because it was in the pantry. By the way, does pasta sauce expire?" 


Step Seven:  Obligatory comment about how the men in your life like the recipe. "My hubs LOOOVES this sausage dish b/c he also adds bacon, LOL!" Men hungry. Men eat bacon. Bacon good. ((If I ever refer to the future Mr. Elyse Granger as "hubs" please press my face into a pan of hot oil.))


Step Eight: Cook the sausage, or whatever meat your dish will include. You MUST include an alternative for non-meat eaters, or you'll get angry backlash in your comments. ("Shut up, tofu-breath" is not an acceptable response to these comments.) Humor the vegos and pretend for a second that mung beans and sausage taste exactly the same. 


Step Nine:  Toss everything together in one pot. Decide that it looks borderline-inedible. Google some stock photos of the recipe and post that instead. 


Step Ten: MOST IMPORTANT STEP: Posting the nutrition facts. We're all nothing if not registered dietitians, right? We all know the exact number of calories in food that we just throw together. In case you don't, here's what they are (applies to every recipe, everywhere, always.) 


(copy & paste) 
Calories: 175
Serving size: 4 ounces (we all know what this looks like, obviously.)
Sodium: 100 mg
Carbs: 6 g
Fat: *0-6 g (*depending on mung bean usage.) 






You're done!!!! Now enjoy, and keep refreshing your post to read all the glowing comments and SPAM. Pretend to care about what substitutions people would make, and their various food allergies. ("Little Tommy is deathly allergic to salt, so we substituted granulated agave extract and it tasted great!") It didn't, probably. 






Sorry to disappoint everyone who thought this was going to be a real recipe post. Takeout exists for a reason.