The Kitchen Made

I’ve tried before to draw some linear connection between my love of food and some specific influence in my personal history.  I always like simple answers, but I don’t think I can come up with one that links my chronic cooking to a romanticized event involving French food and a summer I spend in Europe.  The best I can come up with involves a combination of two people: my mother and my grandmother.

My grandmother always seemed to have a kitchen utensil in her hand and it was either a knife she had just erroneously sliced herself with, or a spatula with which she was gently shooing me out of the area underneath her feet.  She was always in the kitchen baking and cooking, at least as I remember it.  I think the difference between my perception of her cooking and that of others was that little piece of dough she would give me to pound and knead and over-flour to my hearts content.  Being involved made me feel very special, and I can remember that piece of dough being given to me at an age where I think I was still eating more of it than I was rolling in too much flour.  Bless my grandma’s heart for that.

My mom was everything my grandmother was not, even though she came from her household.  We had about 10 meals that my mom cooked on a regular basis, and on special occasions like New Years Eve sometimes my mom would bust out a special recipe (7 layer dip!!) to bring to a party.  She did make a lot of tasty baked goods now that I think about it, and I’m remembering some layered bars in particular.  I should ask her for that recipe.  My mother became pregnant when I was in fourth grade and due to complications was bedridden for much of it.  Sometime around then was when I started fending for myself food-wise.  I still remember my first creative concoction in which I mixed my two favorite foods: Top Ramen and Campbell’s tomato soup.  Together.  I’m pretty sure I added lots of salt and pepper too because I knew food was supposed to be seasoned.  My mother complained about the nutritional content of Top Ramen/tomato soup so soon thereafter I started adding frozen peas and corn to it.  And salt and pepper and perhaps some italian seasoning.   I think that recipe progressed to other things, and I do remember my “dill phase” where I put dill in absolutely everything, much to my mother’s chagrin.  Eventually (high school?) I mastered the following dishes: chocolate chip cookies, pasta salad, 7 layer dip, guacamole, and stack-a-dinner.  It gave me enough range to feel confident in my abilities when I moved out at 18.  Somewhere along the line someone, maybe my mother, told me that all you had to do in order to cook well is be able to read a recipe and follow it.  I still think that is true, and that thought keeps me from becoming intimidated when trying new recipes.  I take that back.  Indian food intimidates me, and cooking meat intimidates me, but other than that I consider myself recipe fearless.

So three cheers to my new cooking blog!  Hip hip hooray!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.