I was just reading her latest Newsletter about cooking for a picky eater, good fracking lord... I used to like her but I read this with a face as if I ate a bag of lemons. I read on Reddit from ppl who served her in restaurants that she's quite picky and can be a handful and I believe it now...
just some bits lol, she's such a pain in the ass, would it kill her to just eat normal food, not "Alison Roman food" I can't even anymore...
" In an effort to “plan” for my impending incapacitation, we nested the best we could. Bought a chest freezer to store all the broths, beans, soups and stews I was going to spend the month making. Started a shared Notes app list of “things I would like to eat postpartum” in case people asked what they could make for/bring me and a separate list of things I could teach Max to make for us when I couldn’t physically get out of bed. (People are often surprised to learn I married someone who doesn’t cook, but I feel like that’s the only way I could make a relationship work. Imagine my lover telling me the best way to sear a steak, why garlic doesn’t actually belong in Carbonara or how they think they could make a better chicken pot pie? I love a healthy discourse, but respectfully: pass!)
Teaching other people how to cook is what I do for a living, but it’s a very different story to teach someone how to cook
specifically for you. Though, for all intents and purposes, I guess that’s what I do every time I write a recipe. I’ve always said my recipes are not necessarily “the best” or “only” way to cook something, rather, it’s how I like something cooked. With each recipe I’m saying: “This is how you cook…for me.” But no matter how good the recipe, some things (often, the small things) are still tough to translate.
In a surprise to nobody, I have extremely specific (annoying) food-related needs, requirements and preferences. I am a Sally Albright sun, moon and rising. I order my neighborhood breakfast with bacon extra crispy and arugula instead of toast. I order salads with dressing on the side and two halves of lemon, and my tuna sandwich at the diner with rye bread, toasted, but if they don't have rye bread, then white bread, untoasted.
Without being totally overbearing and seemingly ungrateful while someone is trying to take care of you, what’s the best way to insist that for your very special little snack, you like your cucumbers cut into spears not chunks (but if they’re for a salad, then it’s slices –not too thick and not too thin)? When you ask for granola and yogurt, you want it in the small shallow flower bowl, not the large deep golden bowl, so that the yogurt and granola can be spooned next to each other (not on top of one another)? That for broth, they give it to you in the big ceramic mug (the tall one, not the squat one) but still with a spoon, and when you ask for your toast in the morning, it needs to be toasted till it’s almost burnt, but not so toasted that it’s too crunchy to eat and the egg should be sunny-side up if served with sourdough, but if
the good seedy bread from ACQ, the egg should be a jammy 6-minute one?
"
who can’t cook for themselves (plus, a recipe for sausage and greens pasta)
anewsletter.alisoneroman.com
