Unlike what most food bloggers claim, cooking isn’t my passion. What IS my passion is my family. I learned how to cook because of my kids.
When I was single, cooking didn’t interest me in the least. I was a snacker, not a cook, and a meal for me meant throwing cabbage and chicken in some onion soup and boiling it. And I could make grilled cheese.
When I first got married, I burned pretty much everything because I wasn’t used to staying in or near the kitchen to keep an eye on anything.
My new husband (now-ex, and, no, it wasn’t because of my cooking) asked me if I could put extra breading on fish cutlets when I fried them so I wouldn’t burn the actual fish.
As my kids grew, I felt I should make more than just some kind of pasta or tuna, and learned to make a little more and a little more. By the time the kids were grown, I had advanced into a whole variety of dishes, and now I can spend HOURS in the kitchen cooking.
The tricks for me were
- To realize that cooking is actually a craft…and I LOVE crafts.
- To make the dishes as simple as possible, so that each one takes comparatively little time to prepare or watch.
Baking is another story. My baking normally comes out hit-or-miss, so if I can make it…