Teach Your Children (and yourself) Well

People always ask me how or where I learned to cook.  And I proudly tell them I learned from my Mom.  From a young age she encouraged me to cook with her and taught me with love and patience.  By the time I turned 9 I was able to cook entire meals unsupervised for my whole family.  And when I tell this story my peers are surprised, practically awestruck.  It's occurred to me that my culinary upbringing, the traditions and recipes, the experimentation and just plain love of food is pretty rare.  So few people learn to cook these days.  It's become this untouchable, scary thing.  People trust others to cook for them but they don't trust themselves to cook their own meals.  Well I'm here to tell you...anyone can learn to cook.  And by teaching your kids from a young age to cook and enjoy time spent in the kitchen you will give them a tremendous gift.  You will not only give them the ability to feed themselves, you'll give them a way of bringing people together.

My mom has continued the tradition with my nieces and nephews and they all get a turn at her side.  I'm not saying that everyone will love to cook or that it will become their great passion.  But at least knowing the basics and how to follow a recipe will let them provide home cooked meals for themselves and the people they love.  I can remember my first cook book and it's red spiral binding and how I had the confidence and knowledge to be able to read and follow the recipes.  And to date the pancake recipe from that book is one of my all time favorites.

I can't thank my mom enough for taking the time to show me how to cook and for really teaching me the basics.  And growing up watching her re-invent one meal into another and sometimes another after that gave me the inspiration to try new things and to play with recipes to suit my tastes or even to modify them to what I happen to have on hand.  So if you have kids, pull that step stool up along side yourself and show them what you're doing.  If you don't have kids but you're one of those people convinced that you'll never "be a good cook" or "that you can't cook" I challenge you to try one of my recipes.  We all have to start somewhere and I hope you'll start here with me.