After watching an episode of America's Worst Cook, I had to wonder about the mental capacity of these self-professed horrible keepers of the kitchen. I've always felt that if you can read, you can cook. Following basic recipes with a minimum of ingredients will usually provide one with an edible meal. Practice will eventually provide one with a better meal. When someone claims they can't even boil water, you have to wonder exactly how unmotivated they are that they find excuses to not provide nutritious food for themselves and their family.
My mother came from a culture when education came first so she got very little training or insight into the workings of a kitchen. She got married, she and my dad got hungry, they were living on an airman's salary . . . she had to learn to cook. The go-to cookbook for her was a big, fat one she found in some thrift shop. It was worn when she bought it and the pages, over the years, took on the fragile transparency of a well-used prayerbook or Bible. In some ways, it was right up there with those books as it what how she learned to sustain her family at the dinner table.
Naturally, she was not without mishaps and mistakes but, after the tears, they became the cooking legends of the family. My mother ended up being a great cook and it was because she wanted to provide and she bothered to take the time to read.
I got some training in the kitchen to a small extent but I found I liked to cook and bake and read my way to a certain competence in the culinary scope of the kitchen. Before I could rest on my accomplishments, I got married and my husband had certain allergies to some of the spice packets and such I used to cook meals. I started reading both the labels on the 'helping' stuff but researched how to make the items from scratch. You won't find a lot of canned or prepackaged items in my kitchen these days and it actually saves on the grocery budget.
Like just about anything in life, if you want to do it, you can do it . . . if you bother to work at it. I have had so many weird remarks made to me over the years because I enjoy being in the kitchen. "Your mother could cook so it's easy for you!" "You like being in the kitchen so it comes naturally to you." Uh, I could stand in the kitchen all day and unless I actually made an effort, nothing would happen. "You are a health nut and like to cook healthy." If you have a family, shouldn't YOU like to cook healthy, too? "My mother didn't teach me to cook so I'm hopeless in the kitchen." My mother became a working mother when I was seven so I learned a lot on my own if I was hungry enough. "Even if you didn't actually cook with your mother, you got your aptitude through osmosis." Okay, if one can absorb such knowledge through just being around cooks, a few trips to a gourmet restaurant and you'd be set for life, right?
I have to admit that having a husband and children was an extra push to cooking to the best of my ability. But, the fact that I was responsible for keeping people other than myself healthy, played a huge role in my desire to improve over the years. I figured that besides pleasing my family, I'd eventually have to report in to God about how I took care of the blessings He sent me.
1 comment:
This is cool!
Post a Comment