I Don’t Cook

 

There is an often told story in my family about the time my 8 year-old daughter came home from a friend’s house saying, “Mom, Ellen’s mother has fresh baked cookies in the cookie jar all the time!” The look she gave me indicated that my guilt at denying my darling child fresh baked cookies should cause me to throw on an apron and get out the flour. My response, “Well, you’d better be nice to Ellen’s mother!” I don’t bake. I don’t even cook much and at our house you were lucky to get faux Oreo cookies for dessert. My kids always said, “Mom doesn’t cook, she assembles.”

 

I should explain that I came from a family where a fancy dinner consisted of either braised chicken (not fried, too messy) or broiled steak. My mother cooked what my dad liked: meat, potatoes and gravy. She used few seasonings and even onion in a dish was rare. A green salad was almost nonexistent. Today everything I cook begins with one chopped onion and green salads abound. Now to be fair, it was the time of “fast food” in the form of cans and boxes – canned green beans and canned corn was quicker to prepare than fresh and cake mixes and Jell-O were all the rage. To this day I can’t abide a gelatin dish with anything in it. My mind has been forever scarred by gelatin creations filled with cottage cheese, grated carrots and canned pineapple. And who can forget Shake ‘n Bake? I am often asked for my recipe for Mac and Cheese. I have none. My mother never made the dish and the only cheese I remember, aside from grated Parmesan in a round green can, was the now much maligned, Velveeta, which in my mother’s kitchen was used for everything including grilled cheese sandwiches. Sadly, my children grew up with Mac and Cheese from a blue box!

 

I was invited to a pot luck supper where the theme was, Childhood Comfort Food. Immediately, I knew what I would take – Tuna Noodle Casserole! Wonderful! And my sister agreed. We know the reason for this attraction – it wasn’t meat and potatoes and daddy didn’t like it so mother only made it for the nights he didn’t eat dinner with us, which was seldom. She wanted something fast and cheap that she could throw together with little mess. Today you can make a gourmet version with designer noodles, fresh tuna, leeks, homemade mushroom sauce, imported cheese, wine and toasted almonds, but what’s the point. Down and dirty, canned soup and all, that’s best!

 

You have to call the tuna dish a casserole. That’s what it is. I married a man who wouldn’t eat anything called a casserole. I don’t know why. Maybe his mother threw everything together and called any one dish meal by that name, but while my husband wouldn’t touch a “Chicken and Rice Casserole” he would devour “Baked Chicken with Rice”! Same dish, but perceived as something else. Unfortunately, Tuna Noodle Casserole by any other name was equally hated.

 

My grandmother and her generation all ate locally sourced foods and most were found in the backyard. Grandmother raised chickens for the meat and eggs and had a garden which included a grape arbor. She and my aunt made wonderful jams and jellies. Growing up, homemade jelly was all I knew and store-bought was a sorry excuse. Unlike my mother, when grandmother fixed Sunday dinner she began early in the morning. She snapped the green beans, put them in water with bacon and let them cook all morning while we were at church. She selected a chicken from the pen and proceeded to ring its neck. Have you ever seen that? My sister and I loved watching the headless chicken run around the yard. Then she plucked the feathers, cut it up, fried the pieces and we ate it with rolls and that delicious jelly. I’ve often wondered why my parents allowed me to watch the chicken slaughter. Parents today would never let a child see such a gruesome thing. However, as traumatized as I was by gelatin salads, I still eat chicken.

 

Now my mother was only a passable cook, but she was a pretty good baker. She was known in many circles for her magnificent crescent rolls which were usually reserved for holidays and special occasions. Today the tradition is carried on by my sister and my daughter. Not me. Nope. I have the recipe, but…let me just say this: The other day I was dreaming of biscuits (and living in the South I know a good biscuit). Since I did not have a handed-down recipe, I looked online for something simple and then I began. I mixed the dough and rolled it out with a drinking glass (I haven’t seen the rolling pin in years) and used that same glass to cut the biscuits into rounds. Into the oven they went and once nicely browned, out they came – half inch thick, hard, round hockey pucks! No fluffy rise at all – a disgrace to all things Southern. As I was returning the baking powder to the cupboard I noticed that the expiration date on the half empty can was June 1999!

 

Lately I’ve become enamored with a PBS show called, The Great British Baking Show. It is a game show of sorts where the contestants all bake three challenges during the hour and are judged by two famous chefs. Each week one baker is eliminated. No one on the show is an amateur, but they still struggle and I can certainly identify with their on-screen difficulties with show stopper cakes that fall and tarts with soggy bottoms. At the end of the show the website is listed so you can download the recipes. I knew better, but I looked one up. Isle Flottante (floating islands) is described as a “homey French dessert” which involves poaching egg-sized meringues, floating them in a rich, creamy custard and drizzling everything with a caramel sauce. A spun sugar design is the finishing touch. There aren’t many ingredients, but the directions go on for days. I backed slowly away from the computer.

 

At a recent Holiday Cookie Exchange as everyone drooled over the wonderful home baked offerings, my cookies on a doily-covered silver tray looked pretty good. “It’s a family recipe,” I explained to a fellow cookie lover and then leaning in close, I whispered, “The grocery store!” “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I have that recipe!”

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