Aging Graciously: Learning to cook is the hard part
Does anybody cook anymore? It certainly doesn’t look like it when you go into any restaurant in the area. During breakfast, lunch or dinner, with coffee and sweets in between, our eating establishments are full to the brim. Fast food drive-throughs are thriving. And all that, despite the fact that some restaurants have had to close or alter their hours because of COVID.
Even at my age, I still love to cook and bake. I have to admit that after a busy day, when I finally believe that I am tired, I often don’t feel like putting in the effort. It’s not the cooking, but rather, the cleanup that makes it difficult. How much easier it is to run through a drive-through and throw the cleanup in the trash can in one fell swoop. No washing, no drying, no putting away.
I knew very little about cooking when I got married. Mother reigned supreme in the kitchen when I was growing up. We were allowed to make things like cinnamon toast, snicker doodles and fudge, but were never taught to make a full meal like the ones we sat down to daily. We ate a large variety, always including salad, meat, vegetables, bread or rolls and dessert. Some of the more unusual included rabbit, frog legs, bear, city chicken (veal on a stick) corn fritters, a myriad of casseroles and deep-fried stuff.
As newly-weds, we ate a lot of hot dogs, hamburgers and beans. Our little upstairs apartment featured a one small person kitchen with a smaller than apartment sized gas stove, no counter and a small sink. We washed dishes in the over-sized bathroom. Not a lot of dishes with hot dogs. The eating space accommodated a very small table with two chairs, one of which teetered on the edge of the stairs. “Be sure the door is closed” became our mantra.
One of my funnier memories is of inviting my father to lunch while mother was out of town. She had given me instructions for making ham loaf, and a special sauce, made from Campbell’s Wild Cherry Soup. She told me to just use a tablespoon of corn starch to thicken it. Obediently, I brought the soup to a boil, put in the thickener and came out with runny soup with a little round ball of corn starch in it.
When refrigerated biscuits in a can delighted us all, I immediately opened the can, put the biscuits on a baking sheet and baked without reading the instructions telling me they had to rise first. The little hard round pellets would have gone well with the corn starch ball.
Probably the biggest flop I ever created was high gluten bread, in a time before I had to go gluten-free and wanted the biggest and best loaves of bread I could make. The bread rose, and when I baked it, it rose and rose and rose until it had completely filled the oven. Talk about cleanup.
Through the years I overcame some of my stupidities and using my mother’s wonderful recipes, began producing some good meals. Cooking for six is fun. Cooking for one is not. Still, I continue to make roasts, stews and all the other family dishes (except rabbit, frog legs and bear) that are a comfort.
I wouldn’t say that cooking at home is any less expensive than eating out, nor would I say that all the new gadgets, air fryers, pressure cooker/crock pots, inside grills have made cooking any easier or the food any better. I still prefer my old dutch oven and iron skillets. But who is staying home to try those things out?
I guess if you gathered up enough groceries for a week during our last snowstorm, you might give cooking a few meals a try. If not, the pizza delivery drivers are truly a miracle. They drive through anything to make sure you aren’t hungry.
(Editor's note: If you know of a senior who is unique and deserves a story, please e-mail Lee Elliott at leeadirects@roadrunner.com. Please include contact information so she can share their story with our readers.)
This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Aging Graciously: Learning to cook is the hard part
