Don’t Crowd Me!

I was thinking about crowding the other day as I sat on bleachers in the gym waiting to hear our grandson sing for his class Christmas concert. It was uncomfortable and hot, with little room to relax your arms or stretch your legs. It was all worth it when our grandson was on stage singing and shyly smiling as he noticed us in the audience. After the concert I started thinking about food crowding and how it challenges the quality of a recipe. For example have you ever wanted to brown meat in a pan to discover there is too much in the pan and water appears, causing your food to boil instead of brown? Or putting biscuits in the oven and discovering they all merged into a giant mega-biscuit? How about the giant cookie that was intended to be 12 cookies. These are all examples of crowding. The best way to avoid this is gage your foods to assure they have the room they need to grow when baking. If browning in pans,or stir frying, be sure not to put too much in there. It’s better to do a couple small amounts than to be in a hurry then be dissapointed.