My So-Called (cooking) Life

It's really hard to say when I first became interested in cooking. I sometimes have flashback type memories of being a young girl in the kitchen with my Nonna, "helping" her while she cooked dinner. Blurry snippets of a 5 year old me, standing at the table, pulling the ends off string beans, or my Nonna letting me crack the eggs into the chopped meat that would eventually turn into meatballs. I can still remember the absolute thrill I used to get when, after all the ingredients were in the bowl, the meat, egg, cheese, breadcrumbs, basil, etc. Nonna would let me MASH all the ingredients together, then, let me eat a chunk of the raw eggy mixture before she took over. I would get sent off to wash my hands, then she would give me an entire bag of Cheese Doodles and let me sit 4 inches away from the TV while she finished cooking. Those were the good old days.

Fast forward to my teen years, my interest in cooking was briefly sparked by a required Home Economics class in Junior High School. I know my interest didn't last beyond that one semester of Silver Dollar Pancakes and Vanilla Frosted Cupcakes. At home, I was secretly copying recipes into a Mead Composition notebook from cookbooks I found on my parents bookshelves. I say secretly, because my teen girlie self would have died a thousand deaths before she let her friends find out she was into stuff like that. It was tres uncool.

I recently found that notebook, the pages were yellowed and most of the entries had been done in pencil and were kind of faded and smudged. On the inside front cover I had written:

March 10, 1982 (ack! 1982)

"This is my recipe collection, none of the recipes in here are originals by me. I copied them out of cookbooks because I think that one day in the future, I'd like to cook them, so don't think they were invented by me"

I discovered boys soon after.

College was a blur of fast food, and Lo Mein noodles from the local Chinese takeout. The occasional times I cooked- I made bizarre concoctions like chopped meat, peas, corn, parmesan and rice, seasoned with ketchup and pepper. Mostly I ate Lo Mein noodles though, thank goodness. There was one day that myself and 2 other friends went to the local supermarket and bought as much frozen food as our pooled money could buy, all the stuff we were never allowed to eat as kids, pigs in blankets, some kind of breaded clam things, mini eggrolls, mini quiches, (back when they were still made with lard, vegetable shortening and more lard), and a couple of frozen pizzas with everything on them. We heated everything in my hardly ever used Dormitory oven, and spent the afternoon eating ourselves into total oblivion. That evening was spent regretting every last bite.

I think I made the transition to a somewhat "serious" amateur not too long after I graduated from College. I would spend days poring over cooking magazines, analyzing the recipes, making elaborate ingredients lists and torturing my co-workers with stories about my latest cooking successes and failures. I would run after my Fiancé begging him to try this or that just one more time. . Not much has changed since. I'm still fairly passionate about cooking, I still pore over magazines and cookbooks, I still make endless lists of odd ingredients and I still talk incessantly about cooking. It's all in good fun, and nothing pleases me more than when I can make someone happy with something I cooked, that's a pretty darn good feeling.

Written by Deb on January 4, 2003 09:33 AM