Does anyone... cook?

[greenbeing]

Let me start off by saying kool-aid is quite an endeavor. I find baking cookies from scratch to be easier. Probably because cookies actually come with a recipe, and kool-aid comes with a "mom" recipe. My mom just has to walk into the kitchen and poof! there's food. I tried to get her to give me a recipe for mashed potatoes. You should see it--arrows everywhere ("oh, yes, I forgot to have you drain them"; "I forgot to have you add butter--just add as much as you think looks good"). She's one of those experts who can't understand that one needs to be told to scrub, peel, and cut potatoes. And measuring? She's never measured anything in her life. Nor does she know how long it takes to bake something. These are instincts I was not born with.

I suppose the thing to do would be to go out and get a cookbook. But no! That's too easy. I thought it might be more fun for people here to swap horror stories, and give tips.

Friday night I cooked. I do this on occasion, but without recipes. Um, stir fry, sort of. But it didn't fry correctly, and I don't have a wok...

I got these very fun things called "saifun noodles". They make me laugh just thinking about them. Asian cuisine was on the menu that night, so I got some veggies (baby carrots, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and alfalfa sprouts) and I whipped up a batch of saifun noodles, expecting them to be a bit like chow mein or spaghetti...

They remind me of jelly fish tentacles. But not poisonous. They have no taste, they're completely clear and easy to lose, but shiny, irridescent, very stretchy, very chewy. I think they're meant to be a tactile accent to foods, not to be eaten as the main course. I added a little teriyaki sauce. It was okay... But I won't be doing that exact meal again. Although I have oodles of saifun waiting for me to have fun. It's such a funny food! Has anyone here ever successfully used these?

My biggest problem with cooking is that, at home, I'm a vegetarian. I'll eat meat, but my phobia is touching raw meat. I think it stems from whenever my big sister would want the last piece of chicken or something, she used to show me all the veins and muscles and bones and ligaments (and my, how stretchy those veins are!)... Perhaps I should write an essay about mustaches and raw meat... (shudder)

I decided to post because I'm afraid I'm going to get tired of macaroni and cheese one of these days. I live off of pasta roni, frozen vegetables, frozen pizza, canned soup, various pastas. But when it comes to food, I'm not overly creative; my mom only cooked the same recipes her mom cooked, which were the same recipes my dad's mom cooked, which have been handed down through the generations of our family, and get recycled so we only have about fifteen main dishes a year, all of which comprise of meat as a main course. I have trouble imagining what else is out there. Any suggestions? Fun tasty recipes for the amateur chef? Things you'll never try again? Funny stories like the time my co-worker tried to boil water and set the stove on fire? (He lives off of Cheerios now.)

--GB

[bjobsessed]

I'm not much of a cook at all. In fact, I hate it. I'm with you on the frozen stuff so maybe I'll learn something along with you.

I do have a funny story though. Last year, when I was student teaching, I made brownies with the grade one/two class I was teaching. It was a math lesson on measuring etc. We had a great time making the brownies. When they were done I took them out of the oven and left them on top of the stove to cool with a note telling everyone not to eat them. The problem? They continued to cook on top of the stove because of all the heat from the oven! They were so hard and crunchy I thought they were gross. The kids loved them. There wasn't one left. They kept asking if they could have another one of those really good crunchy brownies.

[Duchess of Lashes]

I can't call what I do cooking - although it has managed to sustain my family without too many visits to the local restaurants (or the Doctor's office!) I prefer to think of my kitchen as a laboratory - I have experimented with a great number of things over the years - some successfully, some not!

I have made a pound cake that really was, by the time I was finished, able to hold open the front door in hurricane force winds; prepared bread that turned out flatter than that provided to our Anglican church for Communion services (Oh, that's what yeast is for!); cooked a very expensive Filet Mignon to within an inch of its life and almost single handedly succeeded in gutting the kitchen of my own apartment with flame throwing lamb chops.

Those lessons long under my belt, I stick with safe things now - and I have learned how, over time, thanks to the ministrations of my mother - who can actually provide a recipe with no arrows - my Armenian mother-in-law who has taught me how to keep her son's stomach relatively happy despite the unhappiness of other parts of him - and managed to teach my baby the love of sweet potatoes, stewed peaches, spinach and brussel sprouts.

One of my favorite experimentations - chicken, Italian dressing, ketchup, onions, potatoe cubes and green peas - served over Basmati rice - has also become a family favorite. I wish there were more favorites and less failures - but then I'd be a cook and not an experimenter!

[bump]

There are people out there who actually enjoy cooking. I don't enjoy it, but I'm good at it when I make something and since I like to eat healthy, I find that I'm dedicating the time to it more often.

That said, cooking for me is like a chemistry experiment: give me the right amounts for each ingredient or the results could be disastrous. I *have* to follow a recipe. My mother does the a-little-of-this-and-a-bit-of-that routine. I force her to measure things out and write them down for me.

I made some pumpkin soup a few months ago that turned out really good (must repeat that in the near future) and, more recently, I improvised with ketchup and honey mixed together for a sweet and sour sauce and glazed some salmon with it.

[Eyphur]

I can sort of cook when I'm desperate, although most of what I eat is either a) from the cafeteria/coffee shop/deli counter at school b) frozen food that I came microwave in 6 minutes or less c) pizza (delivered) or d) cooked by somebody else (usually Mom).

As for recipies...I actually had to get one to make hard boiled eggs.

I used to make my sister birthday cakes. I used Betty Crocker cake mix but I did make my own frosting and wrote HAPPY BIRTHDAY on the cake. Sifting the powdered sugar for the frosting wasn't fun though.

I do have a couple funny cooking stories.

A few years ago on Christmas my mom was working and it fell to me to make christmas dinner. Dinner was great but at 3am I was then up .....ummm ......(how to put this delacately) worshipping the porceline goddess.

A couple of Thanksgivings ago I made an Apple Pie (the only kind Grandma taught me to make) and just after I put it in the oven to bake I went to get my sister to help me eat the extra apples (I never know how many to peal) and came back to the kitchen to find the oven on fire. My parents put the fire out with flour and cleaned out the oven.
So when people asked me how my Thanksgiving was I told them "it was great except for the small oven fire" and I would get some strange looks.

The pie survived, by the way and it was delicious.
But I'm still kind of afraid of the oven.

[greenbeing]

eyphur said:

As for recipies...I actually had to get one to make hard boiled eggs.

Me, too!

And, did you know, eggs explode? The first two were fine, but when I dropped the third into the boiling water, it bobbed down, then up, then the top flew off! Apparently you don't put cold eggs into boiling water straight from the fridge. My mom forgot to tell me that part...

--GB

[bjobsessed]

eyphur said:

As for recipies...I actually had to get one to make hard boiled eggs.

I'm not much better. I was babysitting two kids for a week and I looked on the internet for a recipe so I could make them scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast one morning to break the boredom of cereal.

[greenbeing]

longlashes said:

I have made a pound cake that really was, by the time I was finished, able to hold open the front door in hurricane force winds; prepared bread that turned out flatter than that provided to our Anglican church for Communion services (Oh, that's what yeast is for!); cooked a very expensive Filet Mignon to within an inch of its life and almost single handedly succeeded in gutting the kitchen of my own apartment with flame throwing lamb chops.

Priceless, LL! My fav. is the bit about the lambchops.

My mom tried to burn our kitchen down once. She was cleaning the stove and didn't realize she'd turned it on when swiping at the knobs, and then she set the phone and phonebook on a burner... This was back when the phone company actually owned your phone, so she had to call for a replacement, and they just didn't understand how she'd managed to melt the phone.

--GB

[awlrite4now]

My mother wasn't a great cook, but she did fine with what she had, which wasn't much. We had the same meal for Sunday dinner (that's the noon meal in the south, y'all) every week that I can remember. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans. Then supper was leftover pot roast in the gravy over more mashed potatoes. I haven't made but maybe a dozen pot roasts in the past 30 years, because hers still haunts me.

I took home economics in high school. I wonder what they call that now? Back then, you spent half the year in the kitchen, and the other half sewing. We made biscuits from scratch, and they would all have made great weapons of mass destruction, they were so heavy and hard. My mother never made biscuits unless she used Bisquick, or later on wampum biscuits. You know what wampum biscuits are, right? You peel back the wrapper and wampum on the counter to open the tube.

We were studying how to use the broiler on the oven. My mother never used her broiler, because she had a gas stove you had to light with a match, and I was terrified of it. (One reason I was not allowed in the kitchen as a kid.) So, the lesson was broiled bananas or grapefruit to go along with the WMD biscuits. We prepared the fruit, put it in the oven, and it was not bad. One group of girls kept checking theirs, because it wasn't cooking. The teacher went over and discovered that they had put the fruit in the drawer of the electric range. All the rest of the ranges in the dept were gas, and the broiler is under the oven in a gas range. I still remember how embarrassed that group was, even though I wasn't in it.

The other funny thing I remember about home ec is that we had to count out potato chips as a serving. Each person got 6 chips! Gimme a break!

I learned to cook straight out of the Betty Crocker cookbook someone gave me as a wedding gift. (I married shortly after high school.) Together Betty and I did some marvelous things, and some total flops. Being the stickler I am for following directions, and I did learn how to measure stuff in home ec, which came in handy, I can turn out a passible repast most any time.

Recently, I bought myself a Just for Dinner bread machine. I think the manufacturer must not be from the south, because the idea is that you can work all day, come home in the evening, dump all the stuff in the bread machine, and by the time everything else cooks (45 minutes) the small 3/4 loaf is done, hot and crusty, for the evening meal, which I call supper. It makes perfect bread: a tiny oval loaf of wonderful goodness just begging to be slathered with butter. The recipes are simple, but you must measure because the balance of ingredients is crucial to the outcome. Variations are almost endless, but my fave is garlic and dill bread, which is awesome with chicken salad. Oh, and my recipe for chicken salad? I got it at Sam's Club not long ago. 1. Open can of cooked white chicken meat. 2. Drain the liquid. 3. Dump it in a bowl and add a package of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix and a 1/2 cup of mayo. 4. Stir and refrigerate for about an hour. Try it, it's really good on crackers, too.

Oh, and Betty Crocker makes sure to tell you to start cold eggs in cold water, then bring it to a boil. She's full of good info. And there are pictures! My advice is to find her cookbook and use it as a reference. I'm sure the new versions have microwave directions in them.


The first loaf:

I especially like the Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbs) cowlick on this loaf. None of the following loaves had that.

[dogma]

you guys kill me,, love the stories,, and blushing with memories ,,,

when my d/h asked me to marry him ( well,,,,, actually it was:
"do you want to live together?" i said no,, been there, done that,, he then said " wanna get married?" my response was : "do i have to learn to cook? and can we get a second golden retriever?"
his mom had a spread at any occasion,, home made biscuits, rolls, 10 pies ( no kidding) and i was raised w/ a decent meal 6 evenings out of 7, potato, salad, vegetable, desert,,
but i [glow=red,2,300]hate[/glow] to cook
cooking means i have to cut short whatever i am doing outside and come in and get cleaned up and fix something semi edible

i remember being at sam's club in the meat dept,, asking any woman if this cut of meat could be used for roast beef
if and when i do, i put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl, then read the directions
i have ruined:
> a potato dish: i ran out of paprika and substituted cayan pepper ( same color,, give me a break )
> linguini: you needed to add whipping cream,, i added cool whip ( hint: it evaporates)
> zucchini bread: i added corn starch instead of baking soda ( Hey, i was out of baking soda, and the box of corn starch had a muffin on the box ) weighed about 6 lbs when done
> and herman bread/ amish bread/ friendship bread: it's where you start with a cup of the mixture that someone gives you, it sits on the counter, and every day you add another ingredient to it, and before you bake it, you take out a cup of starter mix to give to a friend
anyways, it blew up in the oven, that was a real mess to clean up,, let me tell you

i have 3 cookbooks, i use all 3 of them for reference for every recipe if i do cook,, and i only cook something new if the cookbook has nice pictures of the dish,, and i always eliminate the weird ingredients,,since i don't have them

[Eyphur]

Dogma, your cooking adventures make me laugh.

awlrite4now said:

I took home economics in high school. I wonder what they call that now? Back then, you spent half the year in the kitchen, and the other half sewing. We made biscuits from scratch, and they would all have made great weapons of mass destruction, they were so heavy and hard. My mother never made biscuits unless she used Bisquick, or later on wampum biscuits. You know what wampum biscuits are, right? You peel back the wrapper and wampum on the counter to open the tube.

When I had home ec in junior high (10 years ago) we called it "Work and Family Life" but it was still cooking and sewing. I had it for 9 weeks in both 7th and 8th grade. I remember making biscuts (quite good actually I still have the recipie and I think I've made them about 5 years ago), mini pizzas on english muffins, veggies and dip, purple cows (grape juice and vanilla ice cream -those were nasty) and 4 or 5 other things that I don't remember off the top of my head.
I still have one of my sewing projects. It is a Christmas door hanger that I made in 7th grade when I had Home Ec from March through May.

[carl1951]

When my mother cooked she burned everything. I used to ask her if she thought I was a god, since she gave me burnt offerings.

Lucy is a cook. Self-taught.

As for me; don't think so. Chef-boy-r-dee and a can opener, that is my extent for being a cook. And of course, a microwave.

Later, Carl

[inuvik]

I have really enjoyed reading everyone's responses. LOL Carl!

I come from a long line of "hate to cook's". But, I love to eat, and eat well and properly, therefore I do cook. Given my hatred of the kitchen though, I do not bake. Meal preparation is bad enough!

One suggestion I have, greenbeing, is to cook enough for several meals, and freeze them in individual portions. Take one out of the freezer the night before, and it's thawed for the next night's dinner. Makes for one night not cooking! Also, having meals like this on hand keeps one from resorting to frozen food when you are in a hurry.

One dish I make and do this with is tortellini with sausages, onions, green peppers, and celery. Tasty, and a family pack makes enough for 6 meals.

Also baking four pork chops in mushroom soup--4 instant meals!

[hoosier]

My maternal grandmother was the best cook ever, in my opinion, but then isn't everyones grandmother! Mom said she could manage in the kitchen but wasn't wild about it. I learned from both of them. With a large family, you learn to make it in large quanities and I still have problems cutting it down. I also like to experiment with spices and give the same old thing a little different taste. Sometimes it works and sometimes... Oh well, you learn not to use THAT again.

We always had stick to the rib kind of meals like hash and chili and what my paternal grandmother called 'old fashioned spaghetti'. Hmmm. Haven't made that in a while and sounds pretty good so might have to make it soon.

I don't recall getting that much out of home ec class. We had to make oatmeal (Yechhhh) and cinnamon toast once. I'm sure we must have made something else at some point ! I just remember washing the dishes with Ivory soap and it made my hands peel!

[Chocky]

I'm lucky, my mother was the kind of cook who just put a 'bit of this' and a 'bit of that' in the pot and it came out tasting delicious. So I have learned to cook from her and I quite enjoy it. Although it is hard when friends ask for a recipe for something I've made and I have to say 'well about a handful of oats and a few spoonsfuls of honey'...
My latest project is muesli, I don't like any of the shop-bought ones so I decided to try making it myself and it worked well and tastes soooo much better.