We started doing a majority of the thanksgiving and Christmas cooking about 15 years ago, when my mom hit 70ish. Not that she wasn’t able to do the cooking, it is just my husband and I love cooking, and my mom didn’t mind, we still make all the usual stuff. We took over doing all the holiday cooking about 5 years ago, to the extent of doing the shopping, and premaking some of the stuff here in Connecticut and taking it back to Rochester NY for the actual holidays. We also visit my mom and brother [he has lived with my parents for about 10 years, doing the heavy lifting and reprogramming the blinking lights on the vcr =)] and will make a big batch of somethingwe know that my mom particularly likes. My brother makes meals and makes sure she eats, but he doesnt really cook =( so we do stuff like beef stew, chili, deboned chicken cacciatori with shells, anything that can be repackaged into individual servings and reheated in a microwave. We bought a ton of 50cent covered three compartment plastic freezer plates when we found them at a dollar store and cooked a thanksgiving dinner and plated all the leftovers, looked like a tv dinner, sliced turkey on a bed of stuffing, potatoes, carrots, gravy and dollop of cranberry relish =)
I try and cook stuff I know she really likes because I don’t know how much longer I will get to …
I don’t thank my mom for teaching me that food = love. But, I do thank her for teaching me the basics of how to cook. She and I have two vastly different cooking styles, but as much as I hate to admit it, I wouldn’t have been able to maneuver as well in the kitchen without her help.
Also, I thank my son for inspiring me to ensure dinner is made at 6:30 and everyone sits down to eat together. When I was younger, the kids always ate first, then the adults. Or, when I was a teenager, we all ate in separate rooms on our laps. In my household, we all eat together at the table whenever possible, no interruptions. I’m grateful - it not only means that I have to cook once and once only, it also means that I get to talk to my son and husband, don’t snack all night until the adults get to eat, that I don’t have to clean twice and that I’ve got a lot more time for other things at night.
I think that the key to learning to cook is the same as learning how to use a computer: Try things, and don’t be afraid of screwing up occasionally. In both cases, genuine screwups are a lot rarer than you’d think, and you can almost always recover from them.
the proper method for heating up frozen fish sticks and frozen french fries
you can add hamburg to Chef Boyardee spaghetti and call it supper
when you fry bologna, it curls up and makes a cup into which you can put canned creamed corn and instant mashed potatoes.
Thanks, Mom!
I remember my eyes being opened back in the 80s watching the Frugal Gourmet. He may have been a perv, but he showed me the path to a different kind of cooking. I watched his show with notepad in hand, bought a couple of his cookbooks, and include many of those dishes in my repetoire to this day. Thanks, Frug!
I’m a pretty good cook now. I learned baking from my husband’s grandmother, and Jewish soul food from his aunt. My bookshelf sags from the weight of all the cookbooks, and Food Network is the first stop when the TV is on. My mid-life years find me still trying to make up for the culinary wasteland of my youth.
My mother is awesome in all other ways–in her defense, it was the 60s, she worked 8 to 5 every day and made sure we all sat down to supper together. And she’s changed her ways. Nowadays, the food is all healthy, fresh and organic Chez Mom.
When I was in college my dorm was all-girls. Boys from next door would come over and beg us to teach them how to do laundry because they’d never had to do it before. My mom, on the other hand, made damn sure that we both could cook and do laundry before we started college.
Even now on occasion she still teaches me how to cook new dishes that I say I like, on the cringeworthy premise of “I won’t live forever, so I should teach you this before I’m gone.” I’m not a fancy chef, but I can cook just about everything I like to eat (I haven’t tackled a turkey or roast yet) so I feel pretty comfortable in the kitchen.
You should have a go at a whole turkey sometime. I absolutely love the smell of an entire thanksgiving type meal cooking, the roasting turkey, the potatoes, the yams, the cranberry chutney, the pumpkin and apple pies, bread I ill actually buy a couple whole turkey wings to make dressing with in a separate casserole dish sometimes when it is just Rob and I and we don’t want the whole turkey bt want the smell and taste. [take a smallish baking potato, large carrot, stalk of celery and small onion per person, cube everything and tosswith a bit of salt, pepper and italian herbs and arrange around the edge of a casserole dish. Make up enough basic bread cube stuffing to fill in the middle, lay the wings on top and sprinkle with a bit extra turkey broth and cover, bake at 425 for about 45 minutes or until the turkey and veggies are done. I make turkey broth from carcasses from cooking turkey dinners and freeze the broth in 1 cup sizes and in ice cube trays for smaller amounts]
Well I thank my Dad. He didn’t cook most nights, usually week-end eggs and salami, or grilling, but it was always a group activity when he did.
And my older brother who didn’t cook but who I lost a lot of bets to - and who collected on those bets in the form of me cooking for him after school. (He ended up with a weight problem for a few years.:))
As a father I am the family cook and my boys have all learned to enjoy cooking as a creative outlet. One of my pleased with myself Dad moments was when my eldest called from college and thanked me for his knowing how to cook.
My mom expected me to learn everything from osmosis. This resulted in me not actually knowing how to do anything when I moved, because whenever I tried to do something, she’d come in and take over and not tell me what I was doing wrong. Vacuuming? She’d say ‘no, no, no’ and take it from me. Cooking? I’d ask a question and she’d be like, ‘just let me do it’.
Now I end up calling her on the phone and she can’t just take over from me, so she actually explains things.
I’d love to read your take on this. In fact, it might be worthy of a separate thread: “Post your beef stroganoff recipes”. Because I have always wanted to make a somewhat authentic one, or one that is awesome despite not being terribly authentic.
Family with three boys - and we ALL learned to cook at an early age.
Reason?
Mom hated to cook.
She was great with cleaning, washing dishes, grocery shopping and all other “domestic” chores, but she just hated cooking.
Luckily, our father came from an Italian family and showed us boys how to cook and grill.
So - in a house with four men, we all cooked and mom rarely had to turn on the stove.
This came in very handy…I used to always make pasta from scratch! When I was young and poor - living in Berlin, I could whip up a great dinner for practically pennies. I would amaze friends with recipes off the top of my head - and the one book I always took with me on my travels was Joy Of Cooking; it was like having a book of “secret formulas” at my disposal.
I always feel sorry for people who don’t know how to cook - for me, it is an adventure and something fun to do.
BTW, anybody old enough to remember when pizza came in a box? You had a package of flour with yeast (add water, mix, set in warm area, let rise and knead) and then spread it on a pizza pan with a bit of oil). Then there was a small package of cheese to sprinkle over it - add sausage or whatever.
At any rate - I started making this when I was 9 years old! Got quite good and eventually started making it from scratch.
I thank my Mom. She never burnt a meal and only had two burners that worked on her stove. We ate well and she taught me and my sisters to bake and prepare all types of food at a young age. I understood measuring cups and spoons in grammer school from making baking powder buscuits.
I never remember her making a bad meal in my whole life. I on the other hand have no concept of time and burn things from even with timers.
I remember the red and white cookbook she used and got as a wedding gift and the old mixer that weighed a ton.
She encouraged us to try and make things from the cook book and we learned to make donuts and cookies. I also used to make stone soup with my friends. You go out and find a stone and wash it well. Throw it in a pot of water on the stove and add things as it simmers. We usually ended up with a vegetable and lunchmeat soup heavy on Oregano! She said this is what she ate growing up poor and it made me appreciate having a good meal.
My Mom is an amazing woman in that she had boundless energy and still does at 70. She had 4 kids and worked full time as an RN. She made us a hot breakfast of french toast or eggs or oatmeal while making our lunches. After work she would be making us dinner while washing the floor on her hands and knees. She fell into bed at 8 pm. Now at 47 I know why!
I learned a lot from my mom, too. She cooked dinner every night, except when Dad played golf on Thursdays. She let my brother and me eat canned soup, or spaghettios or something in front of the TV. It was a treat!
I always had to help in the kitchen. I was her sous chef! I became the Official Cornbread Maker at 12. Mom cooked down home country food.
I learned how to grill from Dad. Saturday night was steak night, and he was in charge.
I sure do miss mom. She passed away in 1989. It took me forever to learn how to make pot roast like hers, and stew. My spaghetti sauce is superior to hers, though. I would love to be able to cook for her.
Dad loves my cooking, though! He lives with my husband and me. He puts up with my experiments and new recipes, as long as he can get some chicken fried steak occasionally.
It’s not just cooking. What happened to knitting, sewing, crocheting, embroidering, etc? On the average, women today don’t know how to do any of these things because either their mothers didn’t know how to do them or they didn’t teach their daughters; net result is that these are all becoming artforms.
It’s the same with a lot of guys. They don’t have a clue about car maintenance or even how to use rudimentary tools. Luckily for me, between my father and high school shop classes I learned all about woodwork and sheet metal work, not to mention how to keep a car running.
I remember on another board one time I got into this argument with this idiot from Chicago. I had mentioned that I had built a dresser for my stepson out in the workshop and he immediately started inferring that this meant substandard furniture, and that I should just buy furniture instead showing me some pieces he had bought that he insisted were better. Turned out they were made of melamine and covered with a wood veneer. He couldn’t get through his head that veneer was thin wood glued onto sawdust board and was inferior to what I had built, which was made out of actual 100% real wood.
The lack of passing on these types of knowledge means that in the marketplace, all that exists is synthetic, soon-to-be obsolete crap, from particleboard furniture to sweaters made out of fake fibres, none of which is guaranteed to last, and most of which is made elsewhere. That is sad.
As to cooking, I enjoy it, and have been enjoying it for 40 years or so, since my parents first started showing me how to cook when I was a kid. With the profusion of recipes and “how to” videos online, its a wonder more people don’t teach themselves how to cook.
Quote: DMark
*BTW, anybody old enough to remember when pizza came in a box? *
Yep, and in our neck of the woods, this was made by Kraft. There were two types – a regular type and a sausage type. The difference was in the sauce, with the former being more like a plain spaghetti sauce, and the latter actually having very small chunks of sausage meat in it. There was also a small packet of herbs to add to the sauce, and a package of Parmesan to sprinkle over it. We used to add all kinds of things to it, usually pepperoni or garlic sausage or other meats, olives, diced onion, etc., as well as mozzarella.
I believe that Chef Boyardee also had an equivalent to this as well.
And I remember when a “complete” spaghetti dinner came in a box too. This was definitely Chef Boyardee and wasn’t bad for a very basic spaghetti.
Quote: Oslo Ostrogoth (to Alice the Goon)
“In fact, it might be worthy of a separate thread: "Post your beef stroganoff recipes”."
Now, that sounds like a good idea. Beef Stroganoff is one of my most favourite dishes to cook.
The first time I had it was at a restaurant I used to work at. I just had to find out how to make it, especially since people were willing to pay for it and the fact that it tasted just so good. Being the distant past, usually one had to consult ethnic cookbooks to find recipes, but the best one I found was in a late 50s version of Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook. I have since tweaked this recipe a little, also, to make it better, both in terms of taste and as far as the time needed to make it.
Those things are all very much alive and well and have mostly enjoyed a revival similar to the one cooking has undergone. There are a lot of people who don’t know how to even re-attach a button, just like there are people who can barely boil water, but there is a thriving community of young people who knit their own sweaters, sew their own quilts, embroider their own samplers (often involving skulls and such), and blog about it all. Doing something of the sort is pretty well de rigeur for any self-respecting female hipster.
I’m glad to hear it. Back in the 70s, such things were considered to be “old hat” and no self-respecting feminist would have gotten caught dead doing any of those things.
My grandmother taught me to tat, make reticella lace, do white on white and cutwork embroidery, standard embroidery, crewel, bargello and petit point and cross stitch. I learned how to take a sheep and go from sheep to garment, including how to make the equipment i need to do it with, natural dying, soap making and pottery making while a medieval recreationist both from other people and lots of hands on research reproducing [or trying to reproduce] archeological finds. I can weave the cloth, weave the trim, and hand sew clothing ranging from early germanic through elizabethan.
Yup, never had it though. I think they still make it. I can do a good job without a boxed setup though =)
I am very glad to see such handicrafts revived. I find handwork relaxing =)
That was then, this is now Knitting crochet, canning, liquor-making, and sewing are all back! Along with small animal husbandry (some of my neighbors are exercising their statutory right to 4 chickens inside the city limits!) vegetable gardening and breadmaking.
If you’d like to learn to knit, or just experience a little taste of the fruits of 3rd wave feminism, find a handwork group through Stitch n’ Bitch. Are you a dude? No problem! Follow along with The Knitting Dude’s Guide to Knitting or grab some patterns from The Crochet Dude.
I ill actually buy a couple whole turkey wings to make dressing with in a separate casserole dish sometimes when it is just Rob and I and we don’t want the whole turkey bt want the smell and taste. [take a smallish baking potato, large carrot, stalk of celery and small onion per person, cube everything and tosswith a bit of salt, pepper and italian herbs and arrange around the edge of a casserole dish. Make up enough basic bread cube stuffing to fill in the middle, lay the wings on top and sprinkle with a bit extra turkey broth and cover, bake at 425 for about 45 minutes or until the turkey and veggies are done. I make turkey broth from carcasses from cooking turkey dinners and freeze the broth in 1 cup sizes and in ice cube trays for smaller amounts]
I would love to be able to cook for her.
Knitting crochet, canning, liquor-making, and sewing are all back! Along with small animal husbandry (some of my neighbors are exercising their statutory right to 4 chickens inside the city limits!) vegetable gardening and breadmaking.