Cooking; I have to admit, that from the time I was a little boy playing with the thick aluminum pans on the floor of mom’s kitchen, I have always had a fascination with food and cooking. Not just eating mind you, which I love oh so much, but the actual process of cooking. Everything about food, from the artistry of how it looks on a plate, to its color, textures on the tongue and the combination flavors. I probably should have gone to culinary school and started a restaurant of my own but, no doubt, I would have ate and drank up all the profits.
Mom was a very good cook. She made the basics and followed recipes to a tee. I don’t ever remember a bad meal. But Mom colored between the lines and rarely experimented with a dash of this or that. Mom was precise; she was a registered nurse, and during certain periods of our growing up, she would have the 3PM to 11PM shift and dad would make us something to eat. Dad, on the other hand, colored outside the lines. Granted, he only made two things; omelets and pancakes, but he made these with flair. He would add chocolate chips or bananas or anything else that seemed fitting to his pancakes; he would put whatever was in the fridge in his omelets, as long as there was cheese. Most of these dishes were successful, some were not, but maybe that is where I learned to experiment.
When I was in college, I often cooked for my 3 college roommates, albeit on a college student’s tight budget; always mindful of saving enough money for the important things like skiing and beer. Sometimes, I would buy one of those large cans of Chef Boyardee; add browned ground beef, garlic, basil and other spices lying around the kitchen; serve with a wedge of iceberg lettuce and some Viva Italian along with a cheap glass of vino fino. My roommates thought I was a male Julia Child; and all for less than $2 a head. I loved the Crockpot and experimented with everything in the slow cooker, which ideally lent itself to the skiing and college lifestyle. You’d put everything in the pot in the morning, and it would be ready for the hungry hippos when they returned home from a day on the slopes, er college classrooms. I tried everything from the simple pot roast, stews, roast chickens to the headier boeuf bourguignon. I loved experimenting; I had some successes and I had some disasters.
People pleaser that I was, I quickly realized that you could win the hearts of others through cooking; that it pleased people immensely; plus it usually saved money. Enter my bachelor years after moving back east from Colorado. You know how the saying goes, ‘a way to a woman’s heart is through her tummy’, or something like that. I loved to cook (and show off a little), they loved to eat. I bought my bachelors pad, for its kitchen, nestled away in Queen Village, the old section in Philadelphia near Independence Hall and bordering the famous eating and drinking strip called South Street. A charming little brownstone built in 1842 with a kitchen to die for. I couldn’t afford living room furniture, but the kitchen was fitted to the 9’s. Center island cooking, beautiful pans, Sub Zero refrigerator…all the gadgetry; I was in a bachelor’s cooking heaven.
Sharing the experience; But I digress; I jumped from my short bachelorhood of cooking and eating head-long into a relationship with Kathy. Oh man could she cook. Up until now, I had somehow managed to date only women who couldn’t cook; who needed a man to cook for them. Love changed all that and, alas, my cooking prowess was no longer special; and what’s more, there was now competition in the house. I married that girl; winning each other through our love of cooking (and eating). After we got married, Kathy cooked the lion’s share of meals, relegating me to the role of sous chef pulling out my pots and pans, only for those times we entertained or the occasional weekend dinner. When Kathy cooks, no two days are the same; new dishes almost every night, new experimenting; never a dull moment and rarely a weak dish. When we would entertain company, we often fought over who got to cook what. Over the years, on these occasions, it has generally evolved that I cook the entrée plus the salad, while Kathy whips up extraordinary appetizers, usually a soup and the dessert. For a time, we even auctioned off dinners in our home for charity auctions. We love cooking and sharing something you both love that much, makes the bond even stronger.
Before we had our two daughters, we had a sailboat on the Chesapeake bay; we cooked up a storm on the boat every weekend; sharing our love of food and life. Then came the kids; how the products of our genes could end up eating only 3 things is still one of life’s great mysteries; no matter how hard we tried, they would only eat grilled cheese, pizza and chicken fingers. Kathy tried almost every day to get them to try what she and I loved so much. These two little girls, and otherwise joys of our life, ruined just about every possibility of a good meal you could hope for. Dining in or out, food with my little princesses was anything BUT a pleasure; for nearly 17 years, Kathy became a short order cook. She and I would eat our version of a gourmet meal, and the girls would have pizza, chicken fingers or grilled cheese. That’s it! Period. It severely limited options for going out too; please no green stuff (parsley or basil) on the pizza.
Happy Ending and the confessions of a Food Channel addict – Alas, over time, exposure to watching their parents eat and cook well, our two daughters have grown to have some pretty remarkable palates. It took each of them nearly 18 years to get there, but both not only try new things now, but they even cook! If there is a TV on somewhere in the house, you can bet good money that someone is watching the Food Channel or a PBS cooking show. And while I normally loathe reality TV (except for Deadliest Catch and the occasional Ice Road Trucker) I have become a closet addict of the reality cooking shows. I almost never miss an episode of Top Chef, Hells Kitchen, Iron Chef or the Next Food Network Star. Admitting the latter is really kind of embarrassing, as it would be more fitting if I bragged about watching every episode of Nova or the McNeil Lehrer report. I do watch more than my share of business news, the History Channel and Discovery, but I find it a little liberating to come out of the closet and confess of this love of cooking shows.
The happy ending is that, now, when the girls are home from school, on nights like tonight; the four of us will sit together and watch the final episode of the Next Food Network Star; we will discuss flavors, textures and presentation. We will kibitz about who did what, wrong and how the editors try to use their teasers to make you feel that the wrong person is going to get Chopped (another good cooking show). But we will do it together, as a family. I don’t know if it was the genes, the environment, the cooking shows, or what finally got the girls to eat, but now we all share a passion for cooking. What was once a love for cooking that I had as a young man, is now something we share as a family. Life is good (and tasty).
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