In my long ago youth, there wasn't much question of who was going to cook. You were, if you were going to get married. You would stand and cook three times a day, for your husband and your family. Your own taste and your own taste buds and your experience would provide the framework for your work, as you developed your skills.
I went into marriage very young, at nineteen. I had cooked only one meal previously, one time when I had a tantrum at eighteen and refused to eat with the family. My mother removed all traces of my meal and wisely grabbed everybody and took off. Before she left, she told me that there was ground beef, and peas, and so forth in the refrigerator and that I would make my meal for myself. This was at mid-day, and it was probably about one before I crept down to the empty kitchen and got to work. I made myself the worst tasting meal that I can remember. I wondered at the time how my mother could take these same elements and come up with a delicious dinner. My sisters, most of them, seem to have spent their girlhoods at my mother's elbow, learning how she did it. I guess I was somewhere else, reading a book.
I went to Hargrove's Stationery Store, literary center of Brownsville, Texas, in 1948, and bought myself a book. I chose Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cookbook. I chose well. Just reading her recipes made me want to cook. But I did not really use the book until I got married. In a fusty little kitchen in Waco, Texas, I made food for myself and my student husband. I was a student too, and we had a very limited budget. AND an oven with no calibration. Wow--how far have I gotten in sixty years? I ask you?
But , I found that I loved cooking and started myself on a routine that has served me well for all the years since. I am not as good a cook now as my younger sisters, but I have had my years. I would still eat any meal that I prepared in preference to the majority of those set before me in the cafes, bistros, or restaurants we frequent.
I am so glad my husband Theodore is finished with painting and screw-driving in the kitchen. We do not have to search fruitlessly for something good to eat out there.
A few of the husbands in our little far-flung sisterhood have outdoor cooking apparati, and will go out to grill on a regular basis. I wish Theodore loved to do this. I am at the point in my life where I no longer look forward to grilling, broiling or frying meats and fishes. It's greasy and messy, and not as good for us as simple broiling on a grill outdoors. Salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, and there it is. We have to have meat because Theodore has diabetes and it is a good form of controlling blood sugar to eat a bunch of meat in place of pasta, cornbread, rice, tortillas and other starchy stuff. So I would like that. I like meat, too.
When the next generation came along, my three sons eschewed cooking lessons and were glad to have Mom to put the food on the table. However, adulthood doth place strictures on us all. Alexander is a good cook, Gregory was a good cook, Benjamin is a good cook. They have learned to cook in self defense: because they have taste buds, imagination, and a desire to eat a certain way.
In the late seventies, a young schoolteacher friend of mine got married. In the age of Liberation, she made a pact with her prospective husband: One week, she'd cook. The next week, he'd cook. With those rules in place they would venture hand in hand toward a future of shared cooking.
Her week was week one. During that week, she tried out all the variations of her cooking repertoire, all the salads, dressings, pasta salads, chicken breasts, lamb chops, and all the dainties she could produce. A very well thought out and pondered over variety.
Comes week two. (Do you hear a distant drum-roll of doom? Ah yes.) She comes home from work to be greeted with a huge baked ham. And some bread. Next day, sliced ham sandwiches. Next night, more sliced ham, ad infinitum. More bread. I don't think they made it through the week. And the marriage? 'Bout the same. I think that people who have been very careful about trying out the marriage bed beforehand might well profit by trying out the kitchen too.
Tomorrow I'll write some more about men in my family who do a lot of the cooking for their families. They are so good. But why should I say that? They are no gooder than the rest of us! Stand up for yourselves, ladies. I have to close now, as Patricia is coming to play piano and I have not made breakfast. Theo is rooting around in the kitchen. To arms! YAZZYBEL
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