Early on in our relationship, Prince Charming he told me that he wanted a wife who did what his mom did. I told him that I did not go to college for 6 years to cook dinner and drive carpool.
Funny what love does to you. Or me, at least.
When he asked me to move in with him, I floated up, did a Thomas flair right into a triple axel salchow and stuck a perfect landing on Gloria Steinem, who very politely, told me to pull it together, be a man, and stop acting like such a freakin' girl.
Love, man. It messes with your head.
The first night that his kitchen became mine I was desperate to impress him. Really show him that he hadn't made a mistake in choosing me. I wanted him to know that I could create a comforting, delicious meal that warmed his insides and melted him into a gooey pile of little, velvet box.
I made Chicken Tortellini Soup. It came in a plastic pouch from the deli department at Safeway and was exactly like the soup I'd eaten in the dining hall in college.
"Are you sure you don't want to stir it?" he asked, looking warily over my shoulder.
"No. It doesn't say that on the package. It just needs to cook."
That was the night learned that If you can read, you can cook is only meant to sell cookbooks.
Our lovely first meal as a cohabitating couple burned. So so badly.
When my son was born I decided that I wanted him to have the same kind of wonderful, home cooked, from scratch type of meals that I grew up eating around my mother's kitchen table. Food that made our house a home that he would grow up loving. Food that would make him one day look at his beloved wife and torture her with the same phrase that my beloved tortures me with now:
You know, my mom used to make....
So, I turned to the best chef I've ever known for help, and she was still in the kitchen, spoon in hand, right where I left her.
She's become my mentor, my professor, my master, as I slowly, but ever so surely learn how to craft a pile of ingredients into a meal that my family asks for more of.
If nothing else, she taught me three things:
- The best ingredients make the best dishes. If it's not good going in, it won't be good coming out.
- Having the right tool for the job makes all the difference.
- Cooking can be a little of this and a little of that, but baking is an exact formula.
And one more that isn't necessarily a rule, but has saved my runny cheese fondue, thickened my marsala, and made all of my sauces divine~
Rue...what it is and how to make it.
The more I cook, and read cookbooks, and watch cooking shows, the more I've come to appreciate the phenomenal effort that my mother made in cooking for us when we were kids. These old handwritten recipe cards are like a pathway back to my childhood. Back to my mother's kitchen, when she and her grandmother stood making Christmas bread and pancakes and Thanksgiving turkey.
The loopy penmanship and scrawled ingredient lists are an immediate connection to those we've loved our whole lives and who we know loved us because they cooked for us.
I knew you were listening.
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