I get it. I totally understand. Preparing menus, shopping, and cooking for a family every day can be a chore. Even just cooking for myself sometimes requires more initiative and energy than I can muster, so those are the days I “graze” the fridge for leftovers to microwave or throw in some sort of wrap. There’s nothing wrong with that; it takes care of the need for nourishment, which is the primary purpose of the exercise anyway. But I really do like to cook.
It’s very here and now; reading the recipe — if there even is one — gathering the needed equipment; prepping the ingredients and, finally, cooking. Nothing brings me down to earth and grounds me like preparing food, sipping a glass of good Cab and listening to music. If there is someone to share this time with so much the better. To my mind, there are few things more intimate than a couple working together in the kitchen. Cooking food has that kind of power and magic.
Cooking runs in my family. I had two uncles who owned gasthauses in Germany. My great-uncle, Konrad, was only good for a bratwurst and a roll, but my uncle, Franz, was a wiz with all the traditional schnitzles and sauces. My mother was a great cook as well, and an even better baker. My father swears she blindsided him on their first real date with beef stroganoff and a preview of the wedded bliss awaiting him. I’m pretty sure she over-sold the “wedded bliss” part, but I can attest she more than amply held up her end of the bargain in the kitchen over the 52 years they were married.
As moms sometimes will, she had her weekly set menu. Tuna casserole every Friday was de rigueur at our house; we also had our share of meatloaf, stews and spaghetti. But she also liked to try new recipes, especially ethnic dishes. Like most German women of her generation, Mom learned the culinary basics from her mother, my Oma, who was herself an accomplished traditional German cook. These are the knees I learned at.
Like most chefs, my mentors required kitchen help, so I became the sous chef. I helped prep and fetched things, but mostly I was watching them and learning through osmosis. I think I was 6 the first time I recall cooking anything by myself. If memory serves, it was only French toast, but I made it myself, and served my parents in bed one Sunday morning.
Over the years since then I’ve watched all the great cooking shows on PBS to pick up little tips. My particular favorites were the Cajun chef, Justin Wilson, the Frugal Gourmet and Julia Child. More recently, I was a big Anthony Bourdain fan, but more for his cool than any cooking he might have done. Andrew Zimmern and his bizarre foods sometimes actually turned my stomach, and Gordon Ramsay usually seemed more of a bully than a great chef.
The inimitable Julia Child once said, “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking, you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” I credit the Boy Scouts with furnishing me with just such an attitude. Boy Scouts, in case you didn’t know, are real big on wrapping food in foil, and throwing it directly on hot coals to cook for a while. After sitting around the campfire and trying to ingest a few meals of semi-raw potatoes and charred hamburger, you figure out there isn’t much you can do to totally botch a meal cooked at home.
So I hope I can be forgiven if I admit I don’t understand people who claim they can’t cook and act like this is perfectly fine. To my way of thinking, being able to feed yourself is no different than any other necessary life skill. You don’t have to do it well, but you have to be able to do it just the same, so why not acquire some level of proficiency — or barring that, a bit of creativity?
My second wife was lost in the kitchen. She couldn’t even boil water as they say. Despite that, she was very creative and, once, when I baked acorn squash, she suggested filling the two halves with blueberries when I flipped them over to add butter and a little maple syrup; she then suggested we serve the squash with a dollop of sour cream. The result was amazingly tasty and, at my suggestion, she entered the recipe in a contest then running in the local paper. The recipe was published, and she won an award and $50! It became something of a family joke, since I did all the cooking.
Here in my neck of the woods, I’m becoming known for my kitchen experiments, which I share with my food tasters, I mean, neighbors. After she passed in 2010, I salvaged all my mother’s baking pans and forms, so one of the things that has gotten me through the past six months or so has been baking. But with only me in the house, I have to give the stuff away or suffer the consequences to my waistline.
It’s a good thing my neighbors are an appreciative audience, because I’ve had to jettison a fair amount. Some of the favorites this season have been blackberry cobbler, strawberry pie and blueberry lemon cake. I think the buttermilk pie and blueberry scones were a hit as well. So much better than any cooking award was a very nice birthday card I recently received from a friend and neighbor in which she had sweetly written, “Good eats always remind me of you.”
I’ll take her word for it, and gratefully, because there are few things I’d rather be remembered for than sharing the “good eats” which emanate from the Shinto shrine which is my kitchen.
