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My
mom and I didn't (and still don't) have a particularly close or
nurturing relationship, so there were no cozy cooking lessons in our
kitchen as I was growing up. My "education" began when I
was 14 or 15 and giving my parents grief about having to wash the dishes
everyday. I asked my dad why I always had to wash them and he
replied that since my mom did all the cooking, I had to do the cleaning
up. A lightbulb went on somewhere in my mind and an idea began to
form. If I had to wash dishes because Mom did the cooking, did
that mean if I did the cooking I wouldn't have to wash dishes? Dad
agreed that such a trade-off would be fair, though I'm not sure Mom ever
saw it that way.
I began cooking the very next day. I used recipes, asked questions
or made it up as I went along. There were a few flops along the
way, but for the most part my experiments turned out fairly well.
It turned out I had a talent for cooking and some of my most precious
memories are of my dad complimenting a meal I had made, because he was
very stingy with compliments and my grandmother is the only other person
whose cooking I ever heard him praise. I made dinner virtually
every night from that beginning until I left for college three years
later.
Not much cooking went on during college or during the first two years of
my marriage because I worked until 6:30 every evening. We lived
near Tim's parents at the time and since his mom was cooking for 7 or 8
every night, she insisted we just eat there. Tim's mom was a
lovely woman and gladly took me under her wing, but I didn't learn
anything from her when it came to cooking. She was a plain meat
and potatoes cook. She didn't even use spices....really....none.
Not even salt and pepper.
The next stop in my cooking journey was two years spent living with my
grandmother. She was a wonderful old-fashioned, home-style cook
and taught me how to cook the way she did. Everything was so
yummy, but I don't often cook the way she did because it all tends to be
very high in fat (lots of bacon grease and lard involved).
Mom has over the years helped me learn preserving and canning when I've
asked her and we've made a lot of holiday dinners together, but mostly
I'm back to experimenting on my own again and trying new recipes.
I've tried watching the cooking shows on television, but I just can't
get into them. Things that come along in life shape what I make
now, too. With Tim and I both in our 40's now I'm getting more
health conscious and trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables
and healthier cooking methods. I imagine I'll be learning the rest
of my life.
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