Relearning How to Cook and Live

I learned a few recipes from my mother ... but that's been more recently! We didn't have much growing up and lived out of cans and boxed foods. We had very little money and my single mother worked over 40hrs a week at a fulltime job and a series of part-time jobs, so waiting an hour for food to cook when she got home at 6:30 at night or later was out of the question. I knew how to warm up canned food. It was a skill that got me through college.

My mother and I learned to cook more advanced meals as we both grew out of poverty together. We now share recipes and swap ideas for much more elaborate deals that we have gotten from friends, learned on our own or found online.

My mom showed me a lot; I watched her cook (and helped her clean whole squid every Christmas Eve!). I'm trying to teach my older son. I've been letting him help me in the kitchen since he could stand on a chair. Now his 16-month-old brother "helps," too, sometimes. It is REALLY hard sometimes to cook with a very young child (my oldest is now 3). He wants to do things like scoop flour, and I've gotten good at estimating how much his partial scoops contain. :) I just have to let go of expectations of perfection (or speed!!), but I'd much rather he have memories of cooking with me and enjoying the fruits of our labor than have perfectly-measured banana bread (for example) and a clean kitchen floor.

My mom taught me a lot about cooking...we baked apple pies every fall, and my mom made fantastic pasta. My dad taught me how to make breakfast foods: pancakes, eggs, fried potatoes. In the past few years, I've taught myself to cook other things. I'm mostly vegetarian, so I had to learn to cook to feed that lifestyle. My husband is south-east asian, which led to new adventures in cooking: ginger, coconut milk, way too much oil.

I think that a lot of kids don't cook at home. I taught cooking classes to kids in fifth-seventh grade, and many of them had no idea how to hold a knife. By the end of the session, they were able to cook dinner - complete with dessert - for their families. Fact: 99% of picky kids are willing to taste anything that they've cooked...and many of them are surprised to find that they like vegetables and even - wait for it - kidney beans.

My heart ached for Sue. I felt so sad and lonely when reading that section of the book. And years later, both Sue and Shoko still think back on that day with regret. It's sad.

I'm having a difficult time remembering how I learned to cook...or the influences that lead up to learning to cook. My grandfather owned restaurants, but I wasn't in the kitchen. My mom cooked, but memories of that are fuzzy. I guess it was trial and error, cookbook reading, friends and time. My kids were using paring knives in pre-school when it was kitchen time (co-op parent run school), so they got an early introduction. My son wants to learn to cook more, my daughter enjoys baking - but each can handle themselves (mostly) in the kitchen for simple stuff like making eggs. A friend asked me if I'd teach her son how to cook, again - just keep it simple, because she doesn't cook much and wanted him to learn some skills. I should look into it more...isn't that how home businesses are born? :-)

My mom didn't teach me anything about cooking, so I'm horrible in the kitchen. Sometimes I'm okay with that - my partner cooks, and it gives me that sense of balance around the household. Other times I feel I'm at a disadvantage - when I go to my in-laws and my mother-in-law is cooking and her daughters are helping, they all know they have to give me the simplest tasks because I don't know how to do anything. I think this is a bonding time for some families, though it obviously wasn't in ours.

My grandmother taught me to bake bread and cookies (still my favorite things to bake), but my mom wasn't big in the kitchen. Plus, I decided to become our family's lone vegetarian at age 11, which meant that I had to learn how to prepare much of my own food. Trial and error is still my primary cooking method.

I'm seriously considering buying a new book, THE KITCHEN COUNTER COOKING SCHOOL, by Kathleen Flinn, to re-learn some things about cooking. I wasn't really taught a lot, but what I learned from my mom mostly came through observation and oral tradition--her family wasn't big on using recipes. I think that approach can make someone a more confident cook. I've often turned to books to enlarge my range and knowledge of cooking, but after the first couple of times I make a new dish, I tend to treat recipes largely as guidelines.

When I married my son's father, he was actually a more experienced cook than I was. Both of us taught our son to cook, using recipes AND hands-on experience, and he's turned out to be both good at it and confident about doing it.

My poor mom is a terrible cook, but she always let us bake with her when she did that. Still, to this day, I am more comfortable with the precise measurements and combinations involved in baking than I am with the looser, more artistic practice of cooking.

Oh, also, regarding the science fair: I think this was more a socio-economic thing than not. Parents who haven't been to college and who don't go to parent meetings are not going to know about things like science fair boards, unless the teacher specifically tells them...I had a discussion about that with my jr high school teachers the other day (who all met for bookclub!) and they all said they knew just what I was talking about.

Another funny thing is, a friend of mine told me she got 1st place for her jr high science project because it had a pretty display; her Japanese friend got 2nd. The friend's Japanese mother yelled at my friend's mom, saying the winner wasn't worthy. (I didn't know that while I was writing, she told me after)

That definitely came out of my mother not letting me in the kitchen. Once she gave my brother's GF a huge special sushi-making lesson, and I felt horrible b/c she never wanted to teach me.

After some of my mom friends read the book, they told me they now feel guilty every time they tell a kid to stay out of the kitchen, so take special pains to show them how to do stuff! One woman said her mother was Russian and never taught her how to make potato pancakes, so she took special care to show her daughter how to make the potato pancakes.

I let my kids in the kitchen to help most of the time-- my son especially loves baking. They're so proud when they make something! I love it.

My mom never allowed me or my brother to even be in the kitchen unless it was time to eat. So, she never taught me anything in those regards. I had my own place at 19 with my (now) husband and we ate a lot of pot pies, TV dinners and boxed meals at first. When discovering that it was getting too expensive to eat like that (and the fact that I was SICK TO DEATH OF FROZEN CRAP, the Ramen I liked) I called my mom and asked her to give me a couple of her recipes. That's how it started. Those first two years of making lunch and dinner every night were a trial by fire. I laugh now when I tell people about the time I over salted the bejeezus out of the potato soup or the time I served spaghetti to my in-laws with too many crushed red pepper flakes and we all sat in pools of sweat as we ate. Baking was hard, too. But again, practice made it easier. Getting comfortable made it more bearable to try new things. It's been almost 10 years and I'm still making stupid mistakes, but when you're self-taught (and cookbooks really are rarely any help...INTERNET!) mistakes are part of the learning process. I agree with a lot of the other commenters that cooking needs to be a skill passed down. I have sons and they will be no exception. They will leave this house being comfortable in the kitchen.

My mom taught herself to cook from cookbooks. Though I don't remember her actively 'teaching' me how to cook, I know I learned from her thanks to her willingness to let me experiment on my own in the kitchen and to answer my many questions whenever she was cooking.

I learned to cook from Mom and Granny, reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows.

I relearned how to shop and cook when we moved to Gainesville, Florida and I became a vegetarian. I relearned how to shop and cook one more time when we began to primarily eat local and seasonal food.

My cooking has become sublime during the past five years as I write recipes for Hogtown HomeGrown and Gainesville Magazine.

I taught all three of our sons to cook, teach little children all the time and do cooking demos and classes thoughout North Central Florida.

Cooking is not an option, it is a necessity for healthful living and a sustainable world.

I wanted to say even regionally within the U.S. it can be challenging to learn to cook what is available locally. As a young wife, we moved from DC area where I grew up to Madison, Wisconsin, then later to Eugene, Oregon, then to Gainesville, FL. While you would think some things would be nationally available, they aren't. Each time we moved, our menu changed a good bit in response.

I could teach myself to cook with only a book, but not a book in a foreign language. My eyes glaze over when I read a blog with measurements that are in grams and such even in English.

On the other hand, I think parents really need to pass on the basics of cooking, no matter the mess, to their children. Yes, it is frustrating. I may never be able to teach my children to whisk and stir properly. They are teenagers and I am still working on it.

Those are basic survival skills. Kids belong in the kitchen--to learn, to absorb, to become familiar with food. It isn't just teaching them how to heat the water for their oatmeal in the microwave or thinking they will be ok because they can put a frozen snack in the microwave.

I respect that Shoko was trying so hard that she learned how to cook in the "American" way. I can imagine that if I moved to Japan, I would not give up my spaghetti or apple pie for sushi.

There was the time we put the beaters for the electric mixer in the opposite slots and we had angel food cake batter all over the room- in the ceiling light, underneath the formica table top. There was the time I made the salad and arranged the sliced carrots like bridges over the lettuce river and Dad ate one and I cried. But mostly it was Mom trying to make something that her finicky children would eat when all she wanted herself was peanut butter and jelly and a good book.

I don't like to cook. Yes, I learned from my mom.... not much. It's only with the internet and video streaming demonstrations of how the batter should look before I put it "with some lumps" (what does THAT mean if you have never been taught) into the pan I'd greased as the instructions had shown me that has given us anything that isn't grilled on the bbq. Daddooooo never minded showing me the ropes.

a/b

I am a great cook and not embarrassed to admit it is a talent. I cook without recipes but also love cooking from a book or recipe. I think I Learned to cook just by being around my mom who in this days was a meat and potatoes, pie and cookie type cook (those were the days). Later I learned to use more adventurous ingredients (an avocado wow!) from my sister in the late seventies as she was newly wed with a baby and I was sixteen and hanging out at her house. I would love to start a cook book club- there is a post at BlogHer about it today - but I will admit, I found it annoying that Shoko and Sue didn't connect on a food level, but again, those were the times.

My mom taught me to cook, mostly by observation. She cooked large meals for our family of 5 so that there were often leftovers for the next day. She rarely measured anything and she never really seasoned food with spices. Seasoning was done with salt. That's it. Now as an adult with children, I find myself needing recipes because i don't know how to properly season food. It's not exactly the same thing, but I kinda get the struggle. It's not learning to cook all over again, but it's learning a new way of cooking.

My mom and sister taught me how to cook as far as correctly following recipes and measuring ingredients, but I've since re-taught myself. I come from a Southern family where it's all about butter, batter, and melted cheese. I've had to learn how to cook veggies that are actually appetizing!

That's not to say, however, that those delectable Southern dishes aren't a real treat every now and then! Yum yum!

I don't know if anyone "taught" me how to cook. I was surrounded by good cooks who all cooked in very different ways. My mom liked to try new recipes, new foods. My dad was big on presentation and flavor. My grandma has never followed a recipe -- but when I got married, she gave me a book full of her recipes. That book still makes me cry, that she took the time to handwrite all of those recipes.

I always knew how to cook and came into singledom and then my marriage with the basics. It wasn't until we had been married for a few years and moved into our home -- with a real kitchen instead of our crazy small apartment kitchen -- that I started to experiment... and discovered that I loved it.

Don't tell my Grandma, but I don't make her cabbage rolls. Her haluski, yes, exactly as it is written. But I've changed a few of her recipes over the years. And I don't cook like my dad. Or my mom.

I cook like me. And I like it. :)

I grew up in Spain were it was common for little girls to spend time with their mothers in the kitchen. I learned to cook by watching my Abuela (grandmother) and Mama (mother) cook. They never measured anything or used recipes... a beautiful way of cooking. I know encourage my kids to join me in the kitchen and rather than measure I am teaching them to taste things and adjust according to their own preferences. It's a different way of following a recipe.

My mom and grandma cooked delicious Korean food, but I took their traditions for granted and never bothered to learn from them. I regret it, because like Shoko and Japanese food, Korean food doesn't have measurements. It is all a little bit of this or that -- you have to learn according to the "taste of your hand" is what my mom would always say. I'm afraid that it's too late to learn because I live across the country from my mom, but I hope to take advantage of learning whenever she visits.