Learning to Cook, Part 2 - Out of Necessity

Many of my early attempts at cooking were a disaster. Just ask my poor guinea pig husband. (He still makes "squeak, squeak" noises when I tell him I've tried a new recipe.) Let me just say - the amount of paste he ate over the years while I tried to learn how to make gravy...well...it's amazing he was ever willing to try anything else.

Although I had made great attempts at learning to cook for the first couple of years of our marriage, the real catalyst came from necessity. About 12 years ago we  relocated for Mike's new job, and almost immediately they cut his hours. Our food budget was $30 a week. (I'm sure we could have qualified for some kind of assistance, but to be honest, it never even occurred to us to apply.) Fortunately, food prices were much lower than they are now. We were also living in California, where the majority of America's food crops are grown (translation - cheaper produce.) At $10/week per person, I could no longer afford to buy pre-packaged food and had to learn to cook.

There was a great, albeit minuscule, library in town that I began to frequent. There was a decent selection of cookbooks, and unlike the last few places that we lived, most of the recipes didn't call for a can of this, or a package of that. There were recipes for real food.
Guess what? I finally figured out how to make good gravy! I learned how to make pancake batter that didn't involve Bisquick. I roasted my first chicken. There were plenty of missteps, as well. There were some foods that we had a really hard time giving up - like crackers, chips, and soda. Basically, the crap. It felt like a major sacrifice, especially for Mike, our resident Mountain Dew addict.

Even though I started cooking from scratch to ease the strain on our budget, it had an unintended side effect. Our son - who had been having certain health issues - got better. A LOT better. Hmm - we had taken him to doctors in 3 states, and not one of them ever mentioned that there could be a link between his diet and the problems he had been having. Although I wasn't sure what this meant, exactly, I was even more determined to keep cooking this way.

Coming soon, Part 3 - 2 steps forward, 1 step back.


Part 1 - In the Beginning

Cooking from Scratch, Part 1 - In the Beginning....

I'm currently reading The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Finn. She writes about how she helped 9 novice cooks learn to cook. She starts by doing home interviews with each one, looking at what they have in their kitchens and talking to them about what they had learned about cooking. I would have loved to have had someone like Kathleen come into my life when I was in my late teens/early twenties! My mom made cookies and fudge well. That's about it. Given the way her own mother cooks, I'm surprised that she learned to even do that. You may be thinking: "Oh - how bad could it really be?" 

Let's see...

My grandmother is decidedly one of the worst cooks that I know. Once when hubby and I were visiting, she kept offering to cook for us and was getting decidedly frustrated by our polite, but insistent, declines. One morning she offered to cook us French toast. One of those telepathic looks passed between Mike and I that said "It's French toast. Even she can't screw it up." So we agreed. Oh...what a mistake that was! We walked into the kitchen a few minutes later to find her standing over a pan full of thick, egg battered French bread. Did I mention that she was frying it in 2 inches of vegetable oil?

Yes, you read that right.

My stomach still gets queasy when I think about it.

My mother's cooking wasn't much better. As I mentioned before, she could manage a few sweets, but even a kid can't live on sugar alone. My mom will often regale people of stories with how she used to make everything from scratch - even butter! What she really did was buy butter, roll it in little balls with butter paddles, and put in bowls for dinner parties. Do you remember when microwaves were all the rage in the early '80's? So do I. My mother started cooking e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in there. When I was in junior high, she started making "meat surprise," as my step-dad liked to call it. He'd often lean over to me and whisper "Do you know what this is?" Not because he didn't know what the recipe was, but because it was often difficult to identify what kind of animal it came from. When I would voice my dislike for something, she would always say: "Try it. You've never had it like this before."  Except that I had...when she cooked the exact same thing last week. And the week before that.

One of my cousins is considered a gourmet cook by the family. I still haven't figured out why. I've seen her cook on a number of occasions, and it always consists of combining several pre-made, pre-packaged items. Maybe it's the fact that she combines them that has my family entranced.
Things weren't really any better on my dad's side of the family. My dad would cook breakfast on occasion, but my step-mother was the main cook. The things I remember having most days were glasses of Ovaltine ("It's good for you!"), warmed flour tortillas with butter slathered on them, and fast food. When we'd go back to Missouri most summer's to visit my grandmother, I can remember everything was friend in leftover grease (she used to keep the can of drippings under the sink, but did eventually start keeping it in the fridge.)  Most of the time we were back there I subsisted on milk and candy.

When I left home I was determined to learn how to cook. Mike's mom had been a stay-at-home mom since her first kid was born, so I thought I scored. Finally - somebody who could teach me to cook! Although she could cook a few more things than my own mother, she also preferred things from boxes and cans. At first Mike was resistant to try new foods, but I was desperate to experiment!

I can remember really wanting to learn to make lasagna. After looking at several different recipes  (all of them vastly different), I decided on how I wanted to make it. I told Mike of my plan, to which he replied that he didn't like lasagna. I was so deflated! Until I asked him why. He said that his ex-wife once made Hamburger Helper lasagna, and he didn't really care for it. Well, hell! Even I knew that HH wasn't going to be anything like the actual thing! (I knew this partly because my mother always insisted that cottage cheese mixed with spaghetti was exactly like lasagna, and it wasn't. even. close.)

Lucky for me, my first foray into scratch cooking was a success. If it wasn't, I'm not sure that I would have continued to try. It provided me with a glimmer of hope while I continued to try (and often fail) at learning to cook.

Stay tuned for Part 2...

This post is part of the Patchwork Living Blogging Bee #18





Other Posts in this series:

Part 2 - Out of Necessity
Part 3 - 2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back
Part 4 - In the Land of Raw Milk and Local Honey
Part 5 - Blue Potatoes and Heirloom Tomatoes

May the Force Be WithYou...and Santa

(Topsy - this post is for you!)

I'm a huge sci-fi geek and it all started with Star Wars. I am old enough to have seen the originals in the theater and it was love at first sight. I was Star Wars obsessed as a child. Seriously... if there had been a 12 step program I'm sure my mom would have stuck me in it. (Not that it would have done any good - I would have relapsed immediately.) I was Princess Leia for 7 years in a row for Halloween, for pete's sake. I have buttons, books, ships, action figures, lunch boxes, t-shirts, notebooks, pencils, stickers, stamps, and posters. And notice that I said "have" them - that's right, they're still in my posession and many of those items now reside in my kitchen.

The best Christmas I ever had as a child was when I got the Millenium Falcon:



The next time my mom really knocked it outta the park was when she got me the movies on vhs for Christmas (Dec. of '91. Yes, I actually remember.) I sat and watched all three movies in a row, which probably would have annoyed people less if I was at home. But I wasn't.... Anyway, thus began my tradition of watching one of the original trilogy every year on Christmas Day. Laugh if you will, but it's one of my most beloved holiday traditions! Each year the three of us (we always spend Christmas Day at home - just us) lobby for our choice of which one should be viewed. So you can keep It's A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. To me, nothing says Christmas like: "Luke...I am your father."

Sidelined by Snot

Yes, you read that right. Some form of plague has run rampant through our house, completely sidelining us for the past week. I was actually coming into December with my time and projects perfectly planned out. There wasn't going to be any of that mad rushing that seemed to happen so often in years past. Nope, I actually had my act together this year! And then the universe went "Nyah, nyah!" and it all went to hell.

Now I'm horribly behind on...well...everything. The sum total of my holiday decorating, at this point, is moving my two blooming Christmas cacti from the kitchen windowsill to the mantel. (That would be the new mantel that we're trying to put in, that's not even actually attached to the wall yet.) Yeah.... 

All of that was my not-so-succinct way of telling you that I haven't been doing anything fun to post about. I did, however, get mentioned over at Attainable Sustainable for my post on homemade stock. Woo hoo! I'm famous. :)