Cooking Tidbit - Know How

Gosh, how do you know how to cook...if you do? how do I know how to cook? what if you don't have a clue how to cook? 

I never really thought much about this before I started this blog. I think we are influenced from a very early age about whether we even can cook as well as if we are doing well as novice cooks. Think about that any time you have an opportunity to have a very young person in your kitchen. Is it, "Watch out! hot! don't touch the stove! get away!" or is it, "It's hot, and I am here to teach you how to be careful around the stove so that you can learn to cook safely. You're smart and I know you can do it. I won't let you get hurt." Attitude can make all the difference in how you feel about cooking and in how you may influence someone else to feel about their ability, no matter what their age.

I am not a chef. I am not a professional. I am a humble housewife cook. Those are my roots, my beginnings and I am very proud of them. My very early memory is learning to cook from my mom, Adrienne. She would teach me and she would also tell me where the recipe came from, especially if it was one from her family or the neighborhood when she was growing up, which was pretty much an immigrant neighborhood of many peoples from other places than our country. My parents were both first-born Americans, their parents having migrated from Canada and England. Because my mom loved to cook, she also took the time to learn the recipes from her mother-in-law, Mary Jane, who was English, so I am very lucky to have gotten some of those treasured recipes in addition to the French recipes from my mom's side of the family. She also gave me the recipes of her mother, Zoe, who she lost to cancer when she was only fifteen years old. My mother had to learn to be my mother without the benefit of watching how her mother mothered. She had to become a "mother" to her younger siblings at fifteen. There were nine children and  she was about in the middle so there were younger ones to raise and she, who was a good student and loved school, quit to help my grandfather raise the children. She never graduated from high school. She never let me forget it and she was the one who made sure I graduated from college. She gave me an education college never could have and I will never forget it. I am always grateful. Thank you mom! I love you! Her recipes are my treasure.

In addition, when I married in 1965, I had the supreme pleasure of having the most wonderful mother-in-law ever, Peg. She never said a critical word or looked askance at anything I did. She also gave me some wonderful recipes which I still make for my husband, George, to this day. Thank you, Peg. I love you!

So, I say to you, get your recipes where you can but try to get some from a dear one to you. Why? because, somehow,they are there with you when you are cooking their recipe. It is truly magic....not to be missed in your life. Love to you, Linda

Cooking Tidbit - Love

Cooking Tidbit - Love

I offered up the deviled eggs recipe partly to be in sync with Easter and what to do with all those boiled eggs! Putting a tray of them out for breakfast when we have company was a big hit. They are also a nice addition to hors d'oeuvres to serve at a party, especially if you substitute some of the other suggested fillings for the egg yolks.

Thinking about deviled eggs reminds me of a fond family story. My widowed mother-in-law, Peg, was getting on in years and she lived alone. Behind her home was a drive-thru store where you could get milk or bread on your way home. She would walk back to the store and, apparently, was purchasing many cartons of eggs. She would bring them home and lovingly prepare deviled eggs for us. 

She didn't learn to drive until she was fifty eight, after my father-in-law passed away and being a bit wild behind the wheel, I would make the children come in from the front yard when she was coming over. She sort "made tracks" as she drove up into our yard and I didn't want any children out there!

Well, she started visiting every few days and would bring us a large platter of deviled eggs. Soon I had about forty five deviled eggs in the fridge! that was when we began to realize she needed a little closer watching over.

What was so sweet about it was that I felt that she was trying to take care of us and this was her way of showing us how much she loved us, even though she apparently didn't realize just how many eggs she had brought us!

I learned so much from my mom and Peg. I hear their voices, telling me what to do next when I don't quite know what to do as I am preparing something. Setting the table with pieces I inherited from my mom brings her to every Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner. I used to be asked to set out certain serving pieces, very carefully so as not to break them, when I was quite young. I swelled with pride at the honor of being asked to do this. When I set the table with her things, I am transported, I am once again that small girl. It is magic I didn't even know she was making at the time.

So at every opportunity, put some love into your meal. Give the little ones in your life a special task. When you are preparing food, no matter how tired or how rushed you are, take a moment to be still. In the silence will come the voices of those who love you, who are sitting on your shoulder as you are preparing a snack or a meal. It is magic.