Home Cooking
Home cooking; nothing quite like it. Baking too: who doesn't crave home-baked goods and goodies? How hard can it be, after all? Not very. Like everything else people contemplate doing it takes a little getting used to, some little determination, and a willingness to give it a try. Else you're stuck with a whole lot of drek in the manner of what's normally called "fast food", convenience foods, pre-prepared food.
I'd have to take issue with some of that wording, in particular food, as in quality-of, much of which is lacking, but you get used to anything in this fast-fast world. Besides which, for so many food preparation is mind-daunting and task-apprehensive. This is likely the second- or third-generation throng whose own mothers and fathers knew little of proper food preparation and became happily accustomed to eating out or taking out.
My own mother prepared everything from scratch. I'd sometimes watch her, wielding a really wicked-looking curved knife with a handle that covered the entire knife, chopping onions and liver in a well-used wooden bowl. She raised dough to bake things like cinnamon buns. She roasted meat in the oven, she cooked chickens, prepared all manner of traditional European dishes. And she was one truly lousy cook.
I had my mother's example. Which is why, when I became a very young bride at 18 with my very own mini-kitchen in an upstairs flat in someone else's house, I had no idea whatever how to prepare food. My idea of boiling water was to put a pot on the stove, then tentatively reach a finger into the water to determine whether it was "hot enough". My darling young husband, in a desperate bid of self-defence surprised me one happy day with a gift titled "American-Jewish Cooking". And we never looked back.
In fact, I used that book so much, starting a half-century ago, that once, when I had it propped up open on back of the stove so I could follow technique and ingredients all the better, it caught fire. The book is well foxed and tattered, its index pages hanging on by a thread, and at the bottom in the middle, there is a half-moon of burnt paper. But the book and I evolved into a devout brace of cooking acolytes and thereafter my husband thrived on its sterling results.
As did our children when that eventuality became reality. I had watched my mother's older sister in her kitchen on occasion, my child's mouth slack with disbelief as she performed seemingly impossible magic with the same ingredients that my mother heartlessly murdered. My love for my aunt and her magical cooking/baking abilities set me up for later emulation, determined to feed my family as creatively and lovingly as she did hers.
Odd, I did not teach our children how to cook, how to bake. I prided myself on providing nutritious, colourful and good-tasting meals, avoiding monotony like the plague. And desserts became my speciality, from baking cakes and pies to gingerbread castles which they could take turns hauling off to school. I was determined that when our children came home after school they would long afterward recall the fragrance of good things baking in the oven.
Imagine my surprise to discover that our children in their turn as adults eschewed what has become the norm and prefer to eat real food, food they are able to prepare on their own. They bake bread, cakes, cookies, muffins, pies. They prepare food as it should be, aware of what they're preparing and its impact on their health. I'm not messianic about food, I never preached to my children; they chose to adapt themselves to the "rigours" of kitchen life.
Our youngest son makes his own jam, sometimes from fruit he picks himself. He bakes bread, he bakes cookies and muffins. He makes Greek dishes, Mexican-inspired dishes, and is willing to try his hand at cuisines of other cultures and countries using basic ingredients of known value. Our daughter bakes rings around her mother, and her daughter watches as her mother produces magic from her oven for their gustatory delectation, taking pleasure in carrying fresh-baked goods over to neighbours as gifts from the heart.
Our older boy quickly learned to fend for himself in his first little kitchen, and he did a fine job of it, although as the first child away from home for the first several years I baked small meat pies by the dozen, freezing them for transport to him in another city. As luck would have it, he married a young woman whose ease in the kitchen far surpasses even my own. All of our children are busy with jobs, recreational and hobby-related activities, but they manage to adhere to this most vital aspect of their lives for quality of life and good health.
The fact is, once anyone is open to the experience, willing to learn the basics of food preparation, appreciates the true taste of good food well prepared, they enhance their lives and their enjoyment of that most aesthetic and sensual of our primary needs. It doesn't in fact, take all that much time. What it takes is discipline and determination, with a soupcon of enterprise.
It's amazing the difference it can make in your life.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 26, 2006
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