Help! I need Cooking Lessons

Cooking is not one of my better qualities. I just never got started off right. Being the oldest of 7, and living in the house with my grandparents until I was 11, I didn't get any cooking lessons when I was growing up. My grandmother Wilson was an excellent cook and did much of the cooking. Everything she cooked was just perfect! Her biscuits were light and fluffy, her rice never stuck together, she seasoned her vegetables with bits of pork, and her cakes were supreme. My mother helped in the kitchen but Mama was the chief cook. I should have been in there getting lessons. Instead I was the "nanny" and helped take care of my younger siblings while mother was in the kitchen.

When Jim and I got married, was he in for a suprise! I had to buy a cookbook and start learning to cook. I didn't even know how to make coffee because we didn't drink coffee in our house. We had to drink milk (although I never did master the art of milking a cow). In the summer we drank iced tea, even for breakfast sometimes. Jim had never heard of anyone drinking ice tea for breakfast, or in the winter.


I bought a Better Homes and Garden cookbook when we were living in Germany the first 2 years we were married. The only problem was I couldn't find a lot of ingredients called for in the recipes, in the German marketplace where I went to shop. I baked my first turkey while living in Germany and didn't know there was a package inside the turkey that needed to be removed. I found the giblets inside when we carved the turkey. I tried to make dressing for the turkey but they don't eat cornbread in Bavaria and the only cornmeal I could find looked like grits. So much for my Southern Thanksgiving meal.


I got my B.S. degree in Home Economics and I'm so glad I didn't get graded on individual cooking. We usually cooked in teams. My interest was more in the interior design, arts and crafts and sewing than in foods.


Over the years, our family has eaten a lot of frozen entrees and convenience foods. When we retired, I started making things from scratch and using as many fresh vegetables and fruits as possible. Food tastes so much better when it doesn't come from a can or loaded with preservatives if bought packaged, ready to heat and eat.


I still have one big problem. I cannot bake. There's just something I do wrong when I mix things to put in the oven. A recent pound cake was a disaster. It didn't rise, with the crusty, split crack on top like my friend's cakes. Another friend told me to cut it in cubes and freeze it until I need a dessert, and then turn the disaster cake into a trifle. Yesterday I made a key lime icebox pie; except it was more like a pudding than a pie. To make it firm enough to cut and serve, I got creative and dissolved 2 envelopes of gelatin and added to the pudding and it became firm like a pie should be. One problem; I added too much green food coloring and it looked more like a Christmas dessert than pale green key lime. But it was good and we ate it and the graham cracker crust which I bought already prepared.



A few years ago I made our son Bill a 7 layer chocolate cake for his birthday and the icing was better than the cake. The granddaughters loved it and keep asking for another one. I didn't tell them how many thin layers I made before I got enough of the same size and thickness to make the cake! And I had to keep making more cooked icing to have enough to spread over 7 layers. I have no plans to make another one any time soon. They have good ones already made at our grocery store.


I don't think my biscuits have ever tasted the same or looked the same each time I make them. I admit to buying frozen, uncooked biscuits from Kelley Foods (not the kind that come in a rolled can). We don't have biscuits very often - too many calories. Once at a family gathering, my nephew Andrew asked if Aunt Judy could make biscuits. He said Aunt Nell's were more like cannon balls. I didn't even get angry because he was telling the truth!



My granddaughters fortunately think I'm a good cook and I usually try to cook their favorite dishes when they visit. Katie loves to cook and when she visits us, she likes to make chocolate chip cookies (so she can lick the spoon and bowl). This photo was taken at the farm house a few years ago when she was about 11. She was standing on a stool to reach the counter. She wanted to make the cookies all by herself. She kept sampling the raw cookie dough and I was afraid she wasn't going to have any left to bake! I remember they were very good.


I cut out recipes from magazines and maybe try them once or twice and my family always say things like, this is good, but we like chicken better fried! Why bother to try new recipes!

I have a basket of recipes on all types of paper, backs of envelopes, torn out of newspapers, etc. and one of my "to do" things for 2008 is to put these recipes in a computer file, coding them as favorites, holiday, pot-luck, etc. I still use my old Auburn and Montevallo home economics cookbooks from high school in the 1950's. They have the kinds of foods and recipes we ate when we were growing up.

My goal is to get all of my "tried and true" recipes in a recipe file on the computer and when I need one, I'll just print it out without having to search through my basket or cookbooks. But I'll miss the dirty,worn, greasy pages of the old cookbooks or cards with icing on them. Maybe I'll save those valuable recipes in a lock box after I enter them in the computer.