I read something recently (a tweet? a recipe blog post? an Instagram post?) that talked about measuring vanilla with your heart.
It’s so true, I think. Rarely does the listed teaspoon of vanilla do what it needs to do.
But I’ve heard my inner life coach urging me a lot recently to measure other things with my heart. Here’s a partial list:
- Vanilla – The O.G.
- Garlic – No recipe recommendation has ever come close.
- Hot sauce – If your heart says less hot sauce, you do you; my heart almost always says MORE.
- Chocolate chips – That “1 cup of chocolate chips” line in the ingredients lists? It’s just a suggestion.
- Mushrooms – More mushrooms will only help.
- Parsley – My heart says no.
- Lime juice – I made my mother-in-law a cocktail the other night and she said, “Oh! That’s nice and lime-y!” That’s because I ignore the recipe and follow my heart.
- Pepper – The pepper grinder at restaurants hates to see me order a salad.
- Cheese – I’ve never said “that was too cheesy” about anything other than a rom-com.
- Wine – As an ingredient, you can often use a bit more than requested; in a glass, let’s all be optimists, shall we?
- Exclamation points – They add pizzazz! I don’t care that they make me seem slightly unhinged!
- (Likewise, parentheses – and dashes, of course.)
- Shampoo & conditioner – I have long hair, and sometimes it needs a little extra.
- Glitter – It’s going to get everywhere anyway, might as well go all out.
- Cleaning spray – Let’s get things REALLY clean.
- Laundry detergent – No way am I filling that cup up to the line for a normal load of laundry. Much better to do it by feel.
- Library books – Do we have but one reusable bag to fill? Indeed. And yet we fill our arms as well.
- Blog posts – Could I say something with (far) fewer words? Perhaps. But the heart wants what it wants.
We had to take a cardboard box to the library to return all our books recently. Too many for bags.
That’s the right amount of books.
I lack an inner life coach, and I just now realized this is part of my problem.
Mine is really overly focused on the garlic/hot sauce issue.
I measure a lot of things with my “heart” – always the salt in a recipe. It’s like I can tell how much it’s going to take and it feels like a spidey sense.
I also LOVE parentheses. I always feel silly for how many I use, but read the Stanley Tucci memoir on food and his writing is full of parentheses and that made me feel better. Ditto with dashes and exclamation points.
Parentheses and dashes and exclamation points are the spice that adds flavor to a sentence!
I adore this post. The idea of measuring with your heart resonates with me. Of course I’m all about vanilla extract and plenty of wine. And reading as many blogs as my heart can hold.
I wholeheartedly agree, Ally!
This is excellent advice! Sometimes recipe quantities really are just the minimum suggestion.
+++++upvote to long blog posts!!!!
Are you familiar with the glitter mystery? Let me tell you, I think about glitter way too much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0/which_mystery_industry_is_the_largest_buyer_of/
I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS.
Now I need to know!!!!
Fascinating! Intrigue!
Your list is excellent and made me smile! There can never be too much cheese! I don’t like wine though. I love exclamation marks!!
I love this. Parentheses are so useful (I use them often – see!)… and I have yet to make a recipe where I don’t “measure with my heart”. I think my mom is partly to blame for that… whenever I ask her for a recipe, she sends me an ingredient list and then adds “I don’t know the amounts, I make it by feel” 🙂
Love this! I too measure with my heart, especially vanilla. A teaspoon? Pfffffft. I measure by glug. I almost never follow a recipe! It’s all by heart.
Also, library books. I go to pick up holds and end up with 5 more than anticipated.
I love the idea of measuring with your heart! Especially with vanilla, wine and blog posts! Exclamation marks and parenthesis are, indeed, the spice of sentences.
Same same same same same same same same same
I usually put less onion than called for in recipes, because it’s a pain to chop and my younger child often complains food is too oniony anyway, so why bother with all of it?
My kids are very different in their approach to recipes. One follows them strictly to the letter, while the other treats them as a rough outline. Can you can guess which is which?
Oh, what a fun post, Suzanne! And yes, I’m a “measure with your heart” type of cook. That’s why we cook, right?? To make our food come out as our heart desires?? 🙂
This a fun post! There are a lot of things we can and should measure with our heart. That is harder for this super type A person. Ha. At least when it comes to cooking. I joke to my super talented cook of an aunt that I don’t even like ‘salt and pepper to taste’ in a recipe! I remember when I was first dating my husband, we were making a dessert to share with our families at Christmas, and he wanted to “eye ball” the 1/2 cup of flour when we were adding 1 1/2 c. My mom indoctrinated me to be soooo precise when baking so I was like – no freaking way can we eye ball it!
But there are times when you really don’t need to be so precise, and more is more. Choc chips certainly fall under that category!!
I love this post so much. I’ll include your list in my What I Keep post for next month. No lies were told here. ❤️
I measure ice cream with my heart, lol
Yaaaassssss
The problem with measuring garlic with my heart is that I can never remember if I changed the amount of garlic called for in a recipe when I wrote it down. Did it originally call for 2 and I wrote 5? Then using 5-7 is reasonable, and 8-10 might be a bit much for People Who Are Not Me who are also expecting to enjoy this meal. But if the original recipe called for 5, then 8-10 is the default amount.
I could solve this with a notation on the recipe card about the original amount of garlic. But that requires reasoning and logic and therefore, is off-limits. Or something.
This is sooo interesting to me because I would never, ever think to veer from a recipe. Ha! I am such a nervous cook and always worried everything will come out terrible, so if a recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of something – it gets 1 tablespoon! Sometimes I will omit things if I know I won’t like them, but I could never just eyeball something. So now I’m having an existential crisis about my weird cooking habits!!! WHAT DOES IT MEAAAN.
But I also use up way more shampoo/conditione than is necessary (and my hair isn’t long). Also, I use up about half a bottle of soap for my bubble baths because more bubbles is always better!
Oh! Suzanne! Most of these I am right with you on (I didn’t even KNOW I didn’t like parsley until my guests bought a container of – shit, what is that stuff that’s a bunch of stuff I liked and then I didn’t like it and realized that it’s because of parsley? Is it tabbouleh? Anyway). But *whispers* I don’t like mushrooms! Finally found the point at which we diverge.
What a fantastic idea for just about anything in life! Measure with your heart.
I agree with you on everything aside from the Glitter. Good lawd…that stuff tries to haunt me for years. 🙂
Dude. Anyone who *measures chocolate chips* is not one of my people. (That said, my mom is such a nervous baker and always follows the recipe to a “t”… whereas I’m a bit more, um, in the follow your heart camp.)
I also adapt recipes with abandon so love reading your meal recaps where you add glugs and extra of this and that. 🙂
I am in the same camp as Ali from Bibliomama – I agree with everything, hold the MUSHROOMS. Ick. Love this post. Well said. 😉