Nailed It

I've been watching Nailed It while stuck in Scenic Under-The-Baby today, and wondering what I would do in the same situation.  I can't help but wonder how much of the recipe the contestants are actually given, and if they just select people who don't follow a recipe well.  Also, it always reminds me of when I was a kid and I'd be amazed at my mother's cooking skills.  "How do you do that so fast and so well?" we'd ask in rapt wonder, and my mother would deadpan, "Practice."  I thought I would never be so good, and I'm at about fifty percent.  My onion chopping is so terrible that I buy a pre-chopped onion if I'm trying to impress someone, but I can roll out and cut sugar cookies with a pleasing level of efficiency, though I was stunned by how small a single batch really is.  Everyone in my family quadruples cookie batches, because if you're going to make your kitchen messy, you need to have a lot of results.  Kiddo ended up with a mountain of cookies shaped like dresses for her Project Runway-themed party.  Everyone decorated them with frosting and sprinkles.  It was awesome.

Mom is crafty, in the pom pom sense rather than the diabolical schemes way.  Decades before Pinterest existed, she gathered clever ideas, and when time was available, we would end up with cool stuff.  We would make sugar cookies that we would paint with egg before baking, then we'd use craft sticks and frosting to make them into cookie pops for birthdays at school.  (PS Egg paint is cool--it creates a shiny glaze on the cookie that doesn't detract from the taste.  It usually appears next to the sugar cookie recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbooks.)  I remember doing Care Bears one year, and Earths another.  If Kiddo's school still allowed food treats, I'd probably do emojis at some point.

I think about this every time someone watches me crochet and converse at the same time, or machine hem a skirt without pins, or create a petticoat tuck using one chalk line and two pins.  "How do you do that??"  "Practice."

https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/paintbrush-cookies/71c57baf-3047-4fd7-b03e-f0488e9decc1