Why Cooking?

As I read about Julia Child (My Life in France) it got me thinking about my lifelong interest in cooking and why I chose that particular pursuit. I may have an answer for me, as well as for you. I think it’s because it’s the first interest, besides reading, I came upon on my own.

My father wanted us to learn music and immersed me in violin lessons (his main instrument) a year before I or my peers were eligible to take lessons or be in the orchestra. Then came piano lessons. My mother wanted us not to walk like truck drivers (Julia Roberts is gorgeous but she does walk like one) so every Saturday we went to ballet, tap and toe lessons.

I’ve written my story for you before, at the age of seven I found Betty Crocker’s Boys and Girls Cookbook in the local library and held on to it dearly while it amassed a whopping $0.31 in late fees. When the librarian called my mother, the gig was up. A few weeks later I turned eight and a brand new book was my parent’s gift to celebrate the occasion. My sister and I held lavish parties for our brother’s birthdays, among them Kings and Queens with the castle cake, and Pirates with a treasure chest cake and a real live treasure hunt. Of course all the accoutrements were there as well. Cardboard crowns with gumdrops on each point, tagboard cones with a chiffon scarf trailing for the girls. And the pirates each had a black construction paper tri-cornered hat and tagboard “sword” covered in aluminum foil. Mom provided the treasure chest. I wonder to whom she left it? It was a tin treasure chest from the lebkuchen our uncle would send us every year from Zurich. She used it every year, along with other tins from other lebkuchen shipments, to store Christmas cookies: apple shortbreads; mincemeat tarts; Scandinavians; Snickerdoodles; and more. I hope my two sisters have the tins. They’re very special to all of us but these ladies are the bakers in the family.

So, for over forty years I’ve been cooking, learning about cooking, reading and collecting cookbooks. I quit work and spent my life savings on cooking school, only to find out that few restaurants are run with the same commitment and inspiration as one owned by Margaret Fox. Instead, minions are forced to enter through a basement, given a coat and pants of a 300 lb. man, and use canned ingredients. I could only take that for two days working nights while going on a series of interviews during the day and I tripped and broke my finger and was led to another profession while I healed. Under Margaret, I looked out windows facing the Pacific ocean, overlooking a garden of Swiss chard and other vegetables and herbs. Fishermen stopped by with freshly-caught salmon, baskets of freshly picked wild chanterelles arrived at the door, and organic farmers came to pick up the vegetable peels that amassed in five gallon buckets at our feet.

Once one has thrived in that kind of environment, imagine spending every night scraping cheese off French onion soup bowls! Last year I broke down and bought two lions-head soup bowls so I could gratinee Julia Child’s French Onion Soup. It took over twenty years to get over 16 hours of cheese-scraping memories. Now they’re in storage with every cookbook I own and 99% of our “stuff.” After nearly five months without our things, I miss them. Luckily I have my laptop and can look up recipes online but I long for the day I can pick out 5-6 cookbooks off the shelf and create the perfect dinner party.

I think it was the first interest I had of my own. My father used to lament the fact that whenever we got together with our aunts all we’d talk about is food. Family reunions consisted of a movie or museum but they were really about breakfast, lunch and dinner! Luckily he’s since become quite a good Italian cook. Mom started subscribing to Gourmet in the mid-1970’s and became a very good cook. My sisters cook everything but when they were younger they specialized in baking. And my brother is a natural in the kitchen.

I finally took up music again at age fifty, learning acoustic guitar. No parent is telling me to take lessons, I chose to do so of my own volition, and if I quit it’ll be only my fault. It’s a lot more difficult for me to pick up for me than cooking. Luckily I’ve an audience of two at home (husband and dog) who are enthusiastic about both efforts. The dog really doesn’t care about the guitar but her enthusiasm for my cooking is more like 200% so if I stretch the truth a bit, forgive me.

The organic packages will be curtailed after this week. I’ve a feeling they’re just discarding produce no-one else wants to buy and sending it along to us. One honeydew melon, four hard peaches, one hard mango, a bunch of grapes and a pint of cherry tomatoes for $19.95. I feel I get better deals and a lot more choice at the farmers’ markets. I intend to try a couple more markets this weekend, and the fish guy will be opening up in our neighborhood in a couple of weeks. At the Park Silly Market on Sunday my heart leapt when I saw a gorgeous bunch of onion tops some guy was carrying. Forget the guy, these were huge spring onions! First time at this market, I had to find out where he got them, and so we did. Is there something wrong with me that a cute guy went by and all I cared about was the onions? Cheers, Dee