An Open Letter

Dear Joe & Josephine,

My recipes are tried, true, and tested.  They are the result of years and years of inviting that special someone I just met, say, two hours earlier at the disco, home for a bite to eat, then realizing that the cupboards are bare. 

Those were the years before the advent of the twenty-four-hour supermarket, when at two a.m.  your only choice was the convenience mart.  Do not, however, be put off merely by the thought.  The dishes presented are designed to dazzle the palate and put you on an equal footing with, gourmets who gallop, chefs who excite you with their essence, and food gurus who smile at you from the boob-tube speaking with a French accent while cooking in a kitchen that costs more than most houses do and using ingredients that cost almost as much as your car.
 
For our purpose it matters not if all the plates used don't match, or if they're chipped, or if there are no real dishes at all.  Every convenience store worthy of the name sells paper plates (and candles). One most memorable meal I prepared in Florida was served on palm fronds and elephant-ear leaves.  In Copenhagen, Denmark, I ordered a special meal which caught my eye, in that the soup, the salad, and the main course were all cold and room-temperature foods.  I duplicated that meal in a motel room once, although not on fine china. 

Fancy pots and pans, dishes, and eating utensils are not needed, except by the food snobs who mindlessly flock to every restaurant that gets rave reviews from another food snob.  But I don't guess they're going to be using these recipes anyway.   

Most of us rave about our Mama's cooking, or Aunt Harriet's, or Uncle Ralph's cook-out.  What kind of credentials do they have?  Did their plates always match?  Does it matter?  Was their food good?  Ah-hah!  Common ground.

I am sure you will find enough variety in my cookbook to please you and your dining guests and companions.  The recipes are grouped so you may mix-and-match to plan your meals, one a week for a year without ever repeating a main course.  So let the food snobs of the world talk of their visual palates, you, dear diners, remember this:  Fine dining is in the mouth of the beholder, not his or her eyes. With a little imagination, the presentation of the simplest dish on paper plates can be glorious.  Several representative recipes are presented on this site.

The element of surprise does more for a memorable meal then the color of the dishes, and this collection of recipes will definitely surprise and delight your taste buds, and make you a magician in the humblest of kitchens..

Imagination is the single trait shared by all the great cooks of history; let yours run rampant.  And run on down to the corner store, where you will find all the ingredients necessary for that spur-of-the-moment dinner, or for that matter, dinner for the boss and his wife on Saturday night.  But for that one I recommend matching plates.

Bon Appetit,

Robbie