Cooking To Impress

It might be more subtle, but we can cook to impress just as we dress to impress. Although I and others are often too proud to admit it, we carefully calculate our outfits for big, impressionable, events. Your clothes say a lot about you. Even if you think it is vain to wear the latest fashions, it does have the practical purpose of showing acquaintances that you care about your appearance and observant enough, and keep your head of the clouds long enough, to know what currently looks suave. There are many other indicators that ones outfit can have, but remarkably so can food. Head Chef's blog said she decided to cook meat and potatoes because the new in-laws were traditional. She wanted show the in-laws through the type of food she prepared that they have traditional values in common. Now if this is the only time she has ever prepared meat and potatoes this is deceptive to the in-laws who just assume it is a common meal of their hosts. If my newly married sister had the desire to show her new dinner guests how "yuppie" a couple her and her husband are, she is not going to prepare a tossed salad with ranch dressing. Rather she would likely prepare a "fashionable" salad (I know this sounds asinine!), perhaps a blue cheese walnut salad with cranberries. The former salad is banal, while the latter is hip. You know, nothing says you are down with it than a cool salad--not even apple bottom jeans. Ha!