This should surprise no one
I've made it absolutely no secret here that I love to cook. I've posted numerous entries of either recipes or experiences in trying/making new foods.
I was talking to my family last week about my cooking (my brother and his girlfriend were up from Florida and as a result my mother invited her parents along with me and my husband over for dinner). It came up over the course of the evening's chatter, about how I had been cooking pretty much since I could read well enough to follow recipes. Hell, I got my first cookbook for my fifth birthday - before I started kindergarten.
I still have that cookbook, twenty-three years later. It's well used - the cardstock pages have warped and discolored due to years of spills - and I realized that I still default to it for lots of recipes. If I'm making brownies from scratch, I'm using this cookbook. Mashed potatoes? Muffins? Homemade "fried" chicken? A quick refresher on the finer points of cooking eggs? A strawberry butter to put on French toast?
I've managed to collect a number of cookbooks since - my husband and I have a great affinity for the basics along with a few niche ones. I have an entire cookbook for the slow cooker, another deals exclusively with snacks to serve with tea. We also look for recipes to try online. Blessed is the Internet that provides us with inspiration.
But it doesn't matter how old I get, the "kid's" cookbook that I got for my fifth birthday is still the one I go to for the basics. I've really been using it when it comes to steaming vegetables. No joke, the section is titled "Non-Yucky Vegetables" and gives you the proper cooking times for an assortment of veggies with the goal of getting them hot but not steaming the bejeezus out of them so that they're roughly the same consistency of baby food in your mouth. And even now it's a God send.
Sometimes wonder if I should have gone into culinary school rather than getting a B.A. in history...
I was talking to my family last week about my cooking (my brother and his girlfriend were up from Florida and as a result my mother invited her parents along with me and my husband over for dinner). It came up over the course of the evening's chatter, about how I had been cooking pretty much since I could read well enough to follow recipes. Hell, I got my first cookbook for my fifth birthday - before I started kindergarten.
I still have that cookbook, twenty-three years later. It's well used - the cardstock pages have warped and discolored due to years of spills - and I realized that I still default to it for lots of recipes. If I'm making brownies from scratch, I'm using this cookbook. Mashed potatoes? Muffins? Homemade "fried" chicken? A quick refresher on the finer points of cooking eggs? A strawberry butter to put on French toast?
I've managed to collect a number of cookbooks since - my husband and I have a great affinity for the basics along with a few niche ones. I have an entire cookbook for the slow cooker, another deals exclusively with snacks to serve with tea. We also look for recipes to try online. Blessed is the Internet that provides us with inspiration.
But it doesn't matter how old I get, the "kid's" cookbook that I got for my fifth birthday is still the one I go to for the basics. I've really been using it when it comes to steaming vegetables. No joke, the section is titled "Non-Yucky Vegetables" and gives you the proper cooking times for an assortment of veggies with the goal of getting them hot but not steaming the bejeezus out of them so that they're roughly the same consistency of baby food in your mouth. And even now it's a God send.
Sometimes wonder if I should have gone into culinary school rather than getting a B.A. in history...