The Joy of Cooking

When I was younger (much younger than today) I loved watching cooking shows. Of course at that time there was no Food Network, so I had to get my Chef Fix where I could. The Galloping Gourmet started my life long love of Australia and Australian accents. I would spend an hour watching Graham Kerr collect the ingredients for the meal he was preparing, write down each one (complete with measurements) and then watch with awe and wonder as he assembled the said meal before my very eyes. Not knowing a thing about television production, it never occurred to me that the dinner he prepared in 37 minutes (commercials, you know) probably took him hours in real time. Being a novice cook (Mac lost 20 pounds the first six months of our marriage), I was nervously anxious to try new recipes and sort of spring them on him giving him the fancy name of the dish that looked like the dogs dinner by the time I was finished with it. I faced each afternoon in the kitchen with dread.

I cried a lot in the kitchen. I couldn't figure out why my efforts never looked like the finished product I had just viewed on The Dinah Shore show, or The Galloping Gourmet. I had no cookbook to guide me and the best meal of the day was generally breakfast. I could (and still do) prepare an omelet like no body's business and could cook grits with nary a lump, but dinner other than spaghetti was beyond me. Mama did all the cooking, we did all the eating. She was an amazing cook that I would put up against any chef in the world. She could take shoe leather and turn it into Chateaubriand, or stretch a meal for 5ive to accommodate a crowd of eight with no loss of flavor. That was my goal, to cook as well as Mama...or nearly as well. I longed for the day that included a real dinner that didn't start with the words Hamburger Helper.

I was in the bookstore one day and came across a cookbook called The Joy of Cooking. It was rather pricey, but I figured, what the hey...I bought it and took it home. I curled up on the couch and began to read. And so began my love affair with cook books. I read all about how to cook meats, about moist heat and dry heat...how to cook potatoes and the difference in salts. I learned that fresh ground pepper was far superior to the powered pepper that may have been ground years earlier and about the spices that made our food taste more like ambrosia and less like cardboard. I learned about the different pastas and what pesto was all about. I learned the difference between a Standing Rib Roast and a Sirloin Tip. It didn't happen overnight, and it took more than one cookbook, but I learned to cook. Better yet, I learned to love to cook and try new things and exhibit not the first sign of fear in the doing of it. I read cookbooks like novels and my approach to each recipe is with ambition instead of consternation. I have three shelves in the pantry that are nothing but cookbooks . My Joy of Cooking is dogeared and the pages are loose and I have a brand new one sitting by it's side. But it's the old one that I always reach for, it's like a beloved and trusted friend.