If
God Meant Woman to Cook
She
wouldn’t have Invented Restaurants
I
have very few talents, and cooking definitely isn’t among them. Growing up, I learned to open a can, dump the
contents into a pan, set the pan on the stove, and then turn on the eye. I
learned to salt meat (heavily), coat it with flour, heat up the lard in the
frying pan, and fry the meat. I didn’t know there was any other way to cook
meat. Chicken, steaks, fish, pork chops all got the same treatment. Salt, coat,
and fry. Better known as SCF cooking. It’s also known as Southern cooking.
The only exception to the SCF method in the
house where I grew up was turkey. My mother excused me from the preparation of
the Thanksgiving meal (Company was coming
so it needed to be edible!) hence its preparation remained something of a
mystery. I knew it involved basting (I had no idea what that was), and brining
(no idea about that either). When I married, I decided that if I’d learned to
read (and I had), and if I’d learned what measuring spoons were (I’d learned
that, too.), then I could cook a Thanksgiving turkey. I opened my Good Housekeeping Cook Book (a wedding
present), turned to the turkey pages, and went from there. The turkey turned out
fine, but I think its fineness had to do with my mother-in-law standing over me, explaining
every step in the cookbook. Subsequent efforts in the kitchen weren't so successful.
During
my first year as a housewife, I decided it was my duty to prepare meals using
something other than the SCF and open a can
method. After studying the recipes in The
Good Housekeeping Cook Book, I dog-eared the ones I thought I could handle,
made grocery lists, and gave it the old college try. There were problems. The
first arose when I didn’t know the difference between Worcestershire and
Tabasco (How was I to know? They’re both the same color!). This made my first
attempt at spaghetti . . . . well, interesting. The recipe called for Worcestershire. I liked to add a little
extra of whatever I was using for good measure, just to make sure the taste got
through. So I dumped goodly amounts of Tabasco into the spaghetti sauce. After
that fiasco, I used the open a can
approach for spaghetti sauce, or rather the open
a jar approach. Even with my
Good Housekeeping Cookbook, my
successes in the kitchen were so few and far between, that I can’t actually
remember any.
Predictably,
after marriage came children. Two of them. If the goodness of a mother is measured
by the cookies she bakes for her children, then I was a bad mother. Except for
a few occasions when I bought those rolls of pre-prepared cookie dough that you
slice and pop into the oven, I didn’t do cookies. Not even Christmas cookies. Why
bake cookies when everyone gives you little tins filled with their sparkly,
iced, and spiced opuses shaped like trees, stars, and angels? Besides, I hated the idea of scrubbing flour
off the kitchen counter after baking. Not to mention the flour that coated the
floor. And my hair. And the children’s hair.
The cookbook
got lost in the shuffle of diapers, music lessons, soccer practice, chauffeuring,
nagging about homework, laundry, et cetera. I got over feeling guilty about
using the open a can and SCF
technique. I believe I actually did my daughter-in-law a favor by being a bad
cook. She will never have to hear my son say: “If you could only cook like my
mother.” Just in case she might actually
threaten to cook like his mother, he learned to cook himself. Quite well, I
have to say. As did my daughter. Being a terrible cook does have its
advantages. When I visit them I sit with my gin-and-tonic while they cook delicious
meals for me.
Eventually,
I wound up in the place most women do: widowed with married children thoughtless
enough to go off and do their own thing. They say make lemonade when life gives
you lemons. I have no idea how to make lemonade other than it involves a lot of
lemon squeezing and sugar, but I decided my lemonade would be never cooking
again. Isn’t that what restaurants are for? I reasoned that had God meant me to
cook she would have given me a talent for cooking, but instead she invented
restaurants. Behold the goodness of creation!
And so I’ve
devoted the past few years to having someone else do the cooking. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t quite work out
the way you intended. Adventures happen, mishaps occur, the unexpected pops up,
and sometimes everything that can possibly go wrong, goes wrong. Especially
when you’re eating in a far corner of the world. I have scribbled down a few of these adventures and, over the next few weeks, will share.
