So, what sparked everyone's interest in cooking and how old were you when you started?

[Arkansas Granny]

My mom wasn't a bad cook, but her cooking was pretty basic and bland. It was a big day when she discovered oregano for spaghetti sauce and I don't think I ever saw a clove of fresh garlic in the kitchen. I didn't realize at the time, but we were really poor so the food budget was pretty slim.

When I was about 10 years old, she went back to work. She would leave me a list of things to do (peel potatoes, carrots, etc.) so she would have a head start on fixing supper when she got home. I enjoyed it and it really helped her out, so she bought me a cookbook of easy recipes for young cooks and I was hooked. I started at the front of the book and fixed nearly every recipe in it and could put a complete meal on the table by the time I was 12 or so.

I'm not a fancy cook and the old standbys are still my favorites and the ones that are most requested and complimented. All 4 of my kids started cooking by helping me out in the kitchen and they are all good cooks now. There's nothing we enjoy more than getting a bunch of us together and fixing a big meal for family and friends.

[Warpy]

1. My mother hated cooking and it showed

Oh, she tried and I have a book of recipes she clipped out of magazines and the newspaper and she had a few things that were actually quite good, but I consider the biggest favor she ever did me was not teaching me her culinary secrets.

When she went to work, it was as a schoolteacher and then principal, so she was usually home in time to cook. Most of the time, it was convenience foods if my dad was on the road, which he usually was.

I started to experiment when I was about 12 when my parents were gone and I could fiddle around in the kitchen undisturbed. I got serious at 18 when I left home and was too poor to live out of restaurants.

Fanny Farmer was supplanted by Julia Child when I was 22. After that, there was no stopping me and I traveled around the globe by checking ethnic cookbooks out of the library and trying exotic recipes with exotic ingredients and new techniques. I got to the point that I prefer a Chinese cleaver for most jobs, fewer sliced fingers.

I think I inherited the cooking gene from my dad's side of the family and I'm deeply grateful for that.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. I don't think my mother hated cooking. It was just something you had to do, but she didn't get

a lot of enjoyment out of it.

[EFerrari]

10. I thought my mom hated cooking but finally figured out

that she hated having to cook for us as a single mom who'd never learned to cook and after working all day and a half. Mom did a lot of things with pleasure I thought she had no interest in when we were out of the house.

My grandmother cooked for us until I was about 11. She had never learned to cook either, being from a country where everyone had cooks. Mami soldiered on for about ten years without a clue. The only thing she seemed to take pleasure in was baking one or two recipes. She never really enjoyed "her" kitchen at all.

I don't know if I enjoy cooking or just working problems hands on. I also like mixing paint, fixing stuff around the ranch and used to do a lot of sewing. Maybe next time, engineering would be the way to go. lol

Food itself has always been important to me because a big cooking day meant a family gathering, the extended family, and that has always been my hub.

[beac]

2. My mom was a good cook, but I too got my start cooking from a children's cookbook.

My mother was kind enough to let me serve my favorite, Tuna Casserole (the kind with the crushed potato chips on top), for dinner now and then. Around twelve, I had to take over and finish preparing Thanksgiving dinner when my mom had to rush off to take care of some snafu at my grandmother's nursing home. I guess I'd absorbed a lot by watching her over the years and my gravy was such a hit that I became the designated gravy-maker every year after that.

I really got interested when I worked in the office of a catering company in high school. Eventually, I asked to be moved to the kitchen because even deboning 150 pounds of chicken (this was in my pre-vegetarian days!) was more interesting than bookkeeping and billing.

[Arkansas Granny]

3. Your Tuna Casserole sounds like the one in my cookbook.

It was the first cookbook I had ever seen with pictures.

This is the one my mother had. The recipe for toast told you how thick to slice the bread. I think it was published sometime in the 30's.

[beac]

13. That cover does look kinda familiar, but I think mine had a photograph of a girl

holding some dish... or maybe I'm just remembering the photo that went w/ the Tuna Casserole recipe. I'll see if my mom can remember.

Thanks for the walk down memory lane! :hi:

[Tesha]

5. All the women in my family

were great cooks, and they were proud of the foods they put on the table.

And I believe they cooked like they did everything in their lives
- at least from a child's viewpoint -
they were confidant and competent and at times joyful in the kitchen.


English peas and pearl onions in cream sauce.
Chicken and biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy.
Jellies and pickles and relishes.
Homemade donuts that Dad called sinkers...

Honestly, I don't remember when it wans't wonderful to be part of it all.
And my daughters carry on the tradition.

[Arkansas Granny]

8. I didn't grow up around much family. Most of them lived in other states.

Now, however, we have four generations living in about a 30 mile radius and we have those big family gatherings that we missed out on when I was a kid.

[NashVegas]

6. Funny You Should Say "Sparked"

I was 3 or 4 and was imitating my mom, playing Suzie Homemaker for a week or two.

One day I got the bright idea to try to fire up the gas oven.

I remember leaning into the oven with a Zippo lighter. I don't remember anything between flicking the lighter and my dad taking me to the barber for a crew cut.

That Xmas I received an EZ Bake oven.

[Arkansas Granny]

9. LOL. It sounds like your cooking experience had an explosive beginning.

[NJCher]

23. that was hysterical!

I can just hear your parents conferring about your Xmas present!


Cher

[flamin lib]

7. When I was about 30 my wife went back to college to get her MBA.

She worked full time, carried 12 hours and filled the few hours not sleeping doing homework. I got really tired of chips and pecanti sauce for breakfast and dinner, so one day I made a tuna salad for us and our daughter. Nothing special but I did my best to dress it up with a bed of lettuce and a slice of boiled egg.

Since then I've worked my way through Mexican, French, Asian, Cajun and traditional American. Our home has a double oven, ceramic cooktop, high end microwave, smoker and gas grill. I make my own sausage, grow my own herbs and when I can hunt my own meat.

I guess anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.

[EFerrari]

11. Sounds like one of our mottoes!

There's all kinds of game around here, rabbit, turkey, deer, quail. But it's all we can do to swat flies and collect eggs so all those guys are safe. Once, one of our helpers volunteered to slaughter a chicken and nobody could eat it. Hopeless. We should be eating like kings but instead, they are.

lol

[Warpy]

14. Well, anything worth doing is worth overdoing

I'm not much of a meat eater, but I have grown my own veg. I've never lived in much of a grain growing climate and I've never been able to rent that much land, anyway, but I did grow buckwheat one year for seed for sprouting and I did try grinding my own flour until my arthritic joints told me to knock it off.

I really miss being able to buy whole fish and bushels of sea scallops right off the boat. No, I don't mind scaling and cleaning fish or shucking scallops if that means I can get them that fresh.

I overdo, too.

[MajorChode]

12. My two grandmothers were my biggest early influence

Both of them had very different cooking styles. My maternal grandmother had all her recipes in her head and she never measured anything. I suspect she could probably scoop out a cup of flour and be within a few grams of being spot on. She could pour vanilla straight out of the bottle and probably be within a few drops of a teaspoon every time. Despite not owning a single measuring cup or set of measuring spoons, her creations turned out incredibly consistent each time. She had a relatively small set of recipes that she did very well and almost never made anything else.

My paternal grandmother measured everything to the nth degree. She kept a big box of index cards with hundreds of recipes, but those were really just the starting point by which she forged her own creations. She kept a notebook with details on the modifications she had made to various recipes. She would often try new recipes and work with them until she was satisfied they were perfect. She also had an uncanny ability to eat something at a restaurant or made by someone else, and recreate that recipe herself with a pretty high degree of fidelity.

[livetohike]

15. It all started with the Easy Bake Oven when I was four or five

We lived with my Grandmother until my parents bought their home when I was six. Grandma was always baking delicious Slovak pastries and I would "help" her. I remember the Easy Bake Oven. I loved playing with it.

I am the oldest of four kids and I would help my Mom out at home by cooking the evening meals. I loved to cook and still do. We rarely go out for a meal.

My sister and I love to be in the kitchen together now and we try out do each other when it comes to appetizers/meals. It's a friendly competition - mostly sharing new recipes we've discovered. We love to cook and we love to eat :-).

[Duer 157099]

16. Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet did it for me

I can't recall my age but it was during summer vacation and his show was on TV during the day when we had nothing to do, so me and my friend would get inspired by his show and then start playing in the kitchen. OMG, it was truly awful stuff we concocted and I can't even recall ever tasting any of it, it was all so randomly thrown together. We had no idea what we were doing. But it was fun doing it.

I like it so much better now that I know what I'm doing.

So, my cooking show watching behavior started very early and continues to this day.

[hippywife]

17. Not sure how old

but it was pretty young. I would spend weekends with my Italian gran any chance I got and we spent time in the kitchen. My mom was a good cook but at home it was always "you have to" when it came to anything in the kitchen, so it wasn't as much fun.

I've always loved cooking and baking for as long as I can remember. :hi:

[Arkansas Granny]

20. Yeah, being told "you have to" takes the fun out of a lot of things.

[yellerpup]

31. We watched Moonstruck last night with Cher and Nicholas Cage

and a whole fantastic cast. Lots of great eating compliments of the Italians. I bet your gran was crazy about you! :hi:

[kestrel91316]

18. I was raised by a loving but kitchen-impaired convenience food queen.

When I was a junior in college I bought a paperback copy of The Joy of Cooking, read the whole thing in awe, and decided I could do better than mom.

[Vinca]

19. I didn't enjoy cooking until well into my marriage.

My early attempts as a teenager who was stuck filling in for a working stepmother were disastrous. There was the meatloaf that poured out of the pan and muffins that made their way around the neighborhood to see who could break one when thrown against a brick wall. My first attempt at spaghetti and meatballs produced a pot of hot, slimy, greasy goo - guess I forgot to cook the meatballs first.:rofl: I have to credit my husband, who worked as a cook for a short time, for teaching me enough of the basics to get me started. Now I'm a wannabe chef.

[Arkansas Granny]

21. We've all had our experience with the cooking disasters.

I can recall some dishes that were politely tasted by the family, but the dog got the biggest share of them.

[hobbit709]

22. My mother is from Vienna

so I grew up around good cooking and baking.

After I started living on my own, I sort of learned the hard way, using what I remembered of my mother's cooking and occasionally calling her.

My basic theory is that you can't use too much garlic or peppers.

[NJCher]

24. The Allure of Cookbooks, Desire for Independence

As a child I collected recipes from magazines for my mother.

As I grew older, I imagined being able to choose what I wanted for a meal rather than what was offered at our family dinner. I would collect cookbooks (small ones, mind you!) for the day when I would have my own kitchen.

My mother gratefully accepted my taking over dinner prep when she was employed. I enjoyed doing it, too.

I was always looking for something different to cook but was frustrated because I didn't always have the ingredients I needed and had no way to get them 'cuz I was too young to drive.

Those are the origins of my cooking interest. There is a Part II to this story which should be under a thread named "when did you find out you weren't really such a talented cook" but I shall spare you that part of the story. :)


Cher

[yellerpup]

25. I was always interested in food and my grandmother, Flora, was my

biggest influence. She had a kitchen in the house and a separate "cookhouse" so we could cook to our heart's content and keep the main house cool enough to still be able to sleep at night. She taught my mom (a teenage bride) to cook and mom always made good pies (including the crust which no one in our family would ever dream of NOT eating) and quick breads like biscuits and cornbread, muffins, pancakes & waffles. Grandma always had a huge vegetable garden plus an orchard, and we spent most days all summer long in "putting up" one thing or another. Tomatoes, chow chow, piccalilly, okra and stewed tomatoes, quart upon quart of green beans, beets, and dill pickles. We made apple butter, plum and grape jelly, and jars of whole pears from the orchard and pint jars of wild blackberry jam. The only fruit we would buy was strawberries for ice cream and jam. Being interested in eating made me interested in cooking and exploring different cuisines. I was the first person in our very well-fed family to ever try a mushroom or a tortilla. I'm still hooked on both. She also had a pecan grove, raised a steer and two or three pigs to share with the rest of the family every year. Then there was the small dairy herd so we always had fresh milk. We churned butter but sold the good stuff off for cash while we bought and ate oleo for five or ten cents a stick. Grandpa had a hand for chickens, so we were never lacking for eggs either. On the other hand, the men in our family hunt, so we also had duck, rabbit, squirrel, and venison. My favorite motivating quote from Grandma: "If you can get to where you can cook good enough, honey, you can get practically anybody in the world to come to your house to eat." She was right.

As a teen, I began cooking for crowds. My family moved at least once a year, so I was always the new kid in school and having to start from the ground floor to make friends in each new town. All I had to do to draw a crowd of teens was offer them food. I started out making home made pizza, but soon the local boys thought it would be fun to challenge me, so I also learned how to prepare frog legs and pheasant just to prove I could without being grossed out. For years, I expressed my creativity almost totally through cooking. It is still a favorite activity that I can be excited about and know that it will also calm me down.

On edit: I forgot to mention peaches!

[pengillian101]

26. What great memories!

My grandparents lived with us - or we lived with them, when they got old, I should clarify. The old homestead was sectioned off into two living arrangements. I was quite young and both my parents worked. So Grandma pretty much raised me and taught me my love of cooking at an early age.

I had my own bread pan and rolling pin (child size), and I have that rolling pin still 50+ years later. What sweet memories - me standing on a chair in the kitchen next to her!

Lemonaid and sugar cookies for me and the neighbor kids served outdoors on a tray laid out on the big old tree stump out in the backyard, next to the lilac hedge. The garden was behind the hedge, that's where Grandpa instilled my love of gardening.

Then later in school, I learned even more in Home Ec - then I discovered cookbooks - no stopping after that.

I am in no way a great cook, but am a seat-of-the-pants, trial and error, type but it's usually good.

[yellerpup]

27. I'm picturing that tree stump table next to the lilac hedge...

and can practically taste the lemonade and sugar cookies. And, you have some great memories, too! I would be completely uncivilized without the influence of my grandparents. My mom thought it was cruel to make us kids drink milk so she served us Pepsi and French fries for breakfast! She also thought anything that came in cans from the store was better than fresh food, which she called "old-timey". Thinking back, I believe I was raised more like a child of the 1930's than the Fifties or Sixties. We lived in houses without indoor plumbing or any running water at all out on the prairie. I read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and felt fortunate because we, at least, had electric lights! The great thing about this background is that I have the confidence to be able to know how to find and prepare food from either forest or field if it ever becomes necessary to do so. My clan is the "Wild Potato Clan" of the Cherokee, so farming is genetic with me. I miss it, too. Thanks for sharing your memories with me. I bet you are a great cook!

[pengillian101]

35. I bet your Mom was very FUN!

"so she served us Pepsi and French fries for breakfast! "

Ya know, everybody does the best they know how to do.

You had a fun Mom. I did too! You survived. You are lucky. Please be thankful you had a such a good Mom.

[yellerpup]

37. She called herself a 'bobby soxer' her whole life long.

She was a heavy smoker, though, and she passed away less than 24 hours after her cancer was diagnosed at the age of 67. She was fun and she had SUCH a smart mouth and a hair trigger. I am thankful for her love. :hi:

[tishaLA]

28. It's Martha Stewart's fault. She made cooking seem cool

and powerful. Besides, I loved/love her exacting standards and perfectionism.

Then, after I was diagnosed with CFH, cooking became a necessity--no more opportunity to eat much processed shit, so I had to be able to cook well and with a minimum of sodium.

[Inchworm]

29. I finally got rid of my wife

Then realized that women have been cooking for me all my life (save some great breakfasts with my dad).

Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed every meal. Hec, here in the mountains growing up I'd schedule visits around supper time to hear one of the many great ladies, usually mothers of friends, say, "You staying for supper? There is plenty."

I did a year or two of good eating practices solo when I tossed the ex the first time. I had a two year old that needed a good diet, so I focused on square meals and nutrition. After the final toss (daughter was 18); however, I lived on hotdogs.. peanut butter.. double cheeseburgers etc. because I was by myself.

This song reminds me of that period :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5utW2K0RFE

Then... one day.. I thought, hmmm I need to freaking eat some good food. I broke out the grill and ate like a champ for a while.

Then... A vegetarian that got me thinking yet again. I realized, all I ate was meat and the occasional corn on the cob or grilled asparagus.

It was around this time that I started "experimenting" in the kitchen. Alton Brown helped a bit with the science, and Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals was great eye candy to keep me watching. I found that I could actually follow direction and meddle with ideas.

Then.. came DU's Cooking Group. I've had some fun trying things mentioned here.

Crap, what was the question again? I gotta go put stuff in the dryer, water the garden, and feed my starter (a previous thread inspired me to wake it up)...

:P

[Warpy]

30. My ex never did learn to take care of himself

He's on #4 with a string of female "roommates" in between, the ones he didn't marry learning quickly that their jobs were maid and cook while paying him room rent.

Baked beans for breakfast, cold out of the can, would be just about his speed.

[Monique1]

32. Just happened to be

at the right place at the right time.

My mother never allowed anyone to work in her kitchen. That was her domain so I never learned to cook when younger. One day when I was in my twenties I was put in a situation where I was told to cook for groups of people - I learned fast and this was before the internet and computers. People loved my cooking way back then......... and years have improved my skills.

Today, cooking a meal for several people makes me happy. Cooking is confidence building for me.

[pengillian101]

33. You found a good group to join!

Welcome :hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. Marriage... no, I am not kidding

I hated cooking... with a passion. Mostly I had bad experiences with baking.

So after I got married I started experimenting and asking questions from mom. These days I do your basic stuff, and believe it or not, gotten a few ideas from Iron Chef, and a few other Food Channel shows.

You know it is bad when the parrots screech when they SMELL the food. They eat what we eat, so yes, they have taste. Their favorite is actually steak, and connie has been known to dance in front of the oven when doing turkey.

[GoCubsGo]

36. I like to eat.

And, I like to eat good food, without having to go elsewhere for it. I don't remember when I started. My grandma always let us help her cook when I was young, so I guess that's how I learned. By the time I got to junior high, I already knew how to cook all the stuff they had us make in home economics class.

[LaydeeBug]

38. My Grandmother...

she's amazing. With eight kids running around her Irish/German house, her chambers stove was always going with something.

She made EVERYTHING from scratch. I mean EVERYTHING. Even later, if you brought something over for Thanksgiving, if it wasn't from scratch, or didn't pass her inspection, it went on the "other" table. LOL

She always says, "If you know how to cook, you'll never go hungry"

Best German Potato Salad on earth. Best German chocolate cake on earth. Best Cherry nut chiffon cake on earth.

Because her family was so big, one of the things she's do for her kids was the make their favorite meal, including the cake, on their birthday. She continued that with her grandchildren, and it was always so special because she's scratch her cutting board or her marble slab and then...MAGIC would happen.

>>>>>>>sigh<<<<<<<<<

[madmax]

40. Truly blessed

:)

[NMDemDist2]

39. i took over the family cooking at about 12-13

i had phone support from grammy and mother, but did it myself until i left home at 16

long hiatus, then as a house wife to my 2nd husband at around 30, i cooked a lot and got a lot better. I had spent years in the 'front of the house' in the restaurant industry so i had an appreciation for good recipes and quality ingredients but when that marriage ended so did my interest in cooking

finally, when i was in late 40s, hubby and i were broke and i had to start cooking again. i really felt like it was a chore and pitched a fit nightly about the 'chore'

i decided that that was totally counter productive for my mental health and the quality of what was coming out of my kitchen so i decided to make cooking 'my hobby' and with that change in attitude i started enjoying it more and the results showed

now Mr. K and i have changed our lifestyle completely, working out 6x a week, eating fresh and low fat so it's a whole new learning curve on how to feed mature bodies for maximum healthy weight loss and supporting a strenuous exercise regimen.

it's all good :rofl:

[NNN0LHI]

41. My mother was a cheapskate and wouldn't buy us sweets

She always had a cake mix laying around though. And I liked sweets a lot. So I learned how to make my own sweets.

Don