My mother was a great cook. She had cooked her entire life, taught by her mother. Once you have been cooking for awhile, you tend to just “know” things making it really hard to teach someone. I spent years asking her to teach me how to make a basic white sauce and deviled eggs. YEARS. She would just say, well I add a bit of this and that and it just turns out.  Mine never turned out. My white sauce tasted mostly of something you might paper mache with and my deviled eggs… well honestly, they were probably more yummy as hard boiled eggs.

But after way too long on this earth, I have discovered how to make both. And now also do it “a bit of this or that” and this is how I got there…

For the white sauce, I started making chicken pot pie for my family in the winter. Now for the crust I do use refrigerator crust (an aside, my grandmother used the red box add water one that was popular in her time frame and hid the box in the trash, to his dying day my grandfather praised her pie crusts, and she would just smile) and I found an online recipe for the rest. Not promoting anything but it rhymes with Hillsbury. This gave me the basic measurements and what each stage looked like. Once you see this a few times it clicks, ah adding the flour to the butter/margarine/bacon fat until it looks like THAT! I learned that adding salt, pepper and onion at this stage (the butter melting) helps to season the flour that seasons your end product (hence no paste taste). The key for me was using a recipe, getting a feel for what each stage of the process looks like and then slowly going free range from there.

Deviled eggs, same concept. I found a recipe, unfortunately this recipe used 8 eggs, 16 halves is a lot for two people, but again doing it a few times, seeing what each stage looked like (and getting feedback, my other half likes them to lean mustard side) helped me now be able to boil just 2-3 eggs and make a few at a time. I also accidentally put chili powder on them one time and it became a hit.

So maybe give yourself some grace, find a recipe and try again.