S/O I hate cooking

FranticFrummie

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 2:20 pm

What was your experience with the kitchen when you were a child? Replace "mom" with dad or grandma or grandpa, or whatever adult paid the most attention to you in regards to cooking.

I was lucky to be taught by my mom, her mom, and her mom's mom. 3 generations of great food, and a lot of fun. My dad is an excellent cook too, and he really enjoys it.

littleprincess

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 2:24 pm

My mom loved (still does) cooking on her own and fast . She doesn't like when we "bother" her .
So as a child I never really cooked besides for preparing myself a scrambled egg or cheese toast .
When we go to her for yom tov she always tells me that I can help setting the table , serving and clearing the table, but pls don't help in kitchen . Lately she learned that 2 extra hands make the work much faster and it's more fun . So erev passach we stood together in the kitchen for hours and accomplished much more

I let my daughter help with cooking and baking
Shes 10 and loves it . It also gives us a chance to bond . She's really good in the kitchen.

amother

Yellow

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 2:30 pm

My mom didn’t know much about cooking and used to make the plainest, blandest meals. She never learned how to make tasty food and didn’t care to learn either. Eventually the meals consisted of frozen things that just had to get heated up, pasta and canned food.
Although I knew how to put together a simple meal when I got married I really didn’t know how to cook.
These days I’m excited about shortcuts that produce delicious meals.

mha3484

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 2:33 pm

Both my parents cook well but I dont remember helping a lot. I did enjoy baking a lot more then my mother so in middle and high school I baked cookies, brownies, cake all kinds of stuff.

I think when I was living on my own, I used recipes and taught myself to cook. If you can read a recipe its really not so hard.

Rappel

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 3:21 pm

Whoops! I clicked "other" from the main page, but it was just because it was my dad, not my mum.

My dad rules the kitchen.

Since I was little, he would have me stand on a chair next to the stove, and teach me things. He would challenge me to taste what he was cooking, and I had to list off all the ingredients based on taste or smell.

He taught me proper knife work, to keep my sink clean, how to properly use a wok, and what good bread dough feels like.

He taught me to love cast iron, and to avoid aluminium at all costs.

As assistant chef, I made a lot of the family meals, and I did a lot of the handwork, so I know what it's like to hand-beat huge amounts of meringue, and to grate 20 pounds of potato by hand, or to peel and cut up 20 pounds of overripe peaches without waste, or to make pasta from scratch. He taught me how to knead dough in a way that builds up muscle in the wrists and forearms. From age 8 and up, I could experiment freely in the kitchen, so long as I cleaned up my mess before anyone else needed the room. Today, when I use my beater I sing, and my dream is to acquire a Kitchen Aid one day, just like my dad has. (He preferred we learn by experience how to do something from the bare basics, so the machine was mostly for his use.) Even though I rarely do things the hard way anymore, I feel very empowered and comfortable in the kitchen, and that's all thanks to my dad.

weasley

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 5:34 pm

As a kid I had alot of responsibilities that as a kid I shouldn't have had. Such as doing my own washing and making food for shabbos.

She taught me how to do it all and I wasn't really resentful but when I got married I kinda felt burn out like I needed a break and it started creating negative connotations with cooking.

With time I realized I really have a skill with it and people always go crazy over my food but it's hard to bring any excitement to it and always feels like a chore.

amother

Lavender

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 5:48 pm

I don't think Mom was much of a cook. E.g. there was NEVER a fried onion in my house. How can you have good food without fried onions? Mom was supposedly sensitive so she'd pierce a whole onion to put into soup or roast ... I began to experiment on my own at some point.

I enjoy eating good (but pretty simple) food but I'm much happier when someone else makes it. I do cook pretty basic stuff though I let my daughters take over as they became old enough and they developed into very good cooks. Now they're all out of the house and when YT is coming they are figuring out what to send me, BH.

FranticFrummie

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 7:31 pm

Rappel, I absolutely love your post. The way you describe it, I can almost smell the food from here! It smells like love. Heart

When I would make a big pot of soup, I would have DD taste it, and tell me if it needs anything. (This is before she could read.) I'd have her smell all of my spices, and decide what to put in based on smell. Then we'd taste again, add something else, and keep going until the balance was perfect. I'd tell everyone that DD "made the soup". Very Happy

She has a natural way of knowing exactly what a dish needs, and she was excited that I was asking her opinion and valuing her input.

I cook by trial and error, and eyeball measurements a lot. I rarely use a recipe, unless it's the first time I'm making something. My great grandmother's recipes called for things like "an eggshell of water, a half a handful of sugar, and a teacup of flour." She didn't have fancy measuring spoons and cups, so she had to learn how to just know your ingredients, know how they react with each other, and go from there. It's cooking by theory and method, not by script. I almost never make the same thing exactly the same way twice.

Cooking should be an adventure, not a chore. I get bored easily. Very Happy

amother

Wheat

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 7:46 pm

My mom hated cooking and basically gave all cooking responsibilities over to me when I was 14.
We had a deal where I did all the cooking and she did all the cleaning plus all the chores that would otherwise be mine. I cooked dinner every afternoon after school and all of shabbos and yomtov. Except for Pesach; that was my father’s thing. It was a good life for me.

ra_mom

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 8:15 pm

My mom is a great cook and didn't give off the feeling that cooking was a chore. She didn't like extra hands in the kitchen but she let me watch anytime and walked me through it any time I wanted (which I did).

If she was ever stuck out of the house she'd call in and ask me to prepare the food she had defrosting. She gave me instructions over the phone and that's how I learned! When she told me to clean the chicken, I asked how will I know what to cut off the raw chicken and what to leave - she said cut off whatever you wouldn't want to stay on your piece of chicken. Smart woman! When she got home she told me she never had such clean chicken in her life, lol.

When she sent me shopping the first time, she told me only choose the fruit that you'd want to pick out of the fruit drawer at home!

amother

Navy

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 9:49 pm

weasley wrote:

Same here.

tweety1

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 9:55 pm

I remember an old neighbor of mine telling me how she called up her mother a few days after her wedding asking her how to make hard boiled eggs. That is when it dawned on me how thankful I had to be to my mother. Whatever recipe I wanted to try, cooking, or baking, messy, patchka, whatever, my mother always always let me, and helped me out if needed. From when I was 6 or 7 yrs old, never told me a no. When I got married l, I started cooking right away without needing an oz of help. It never dawned on me otherwise, I thought that it's normal, it belongs that way. That is untill I had the discussion with my old neighbor. My mother mostly had me go shopping for the ingredients myself. On occasion, if she was by mistake on the street, she'd pick up whatever I needed, otherwise it was all on me. Thinking now, I gotta do the same with my girls.

out-of-towner

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 11:06 pm

My mother blamed her small kitchen on not letting me help out, but I think some of it was just her wanting her own space. I learned to cook in my college dorm and with my grandmother.

As much as I also have a small kitchen and don't love when my (little) kids come and watch me, I remember that I want to give them the experience of cooking with Mommy. I try to balance it, sometimes I kick them out of the kitchen but sometimes I allow them to stay in and help, particularly when it comes to baking. My DS aged 4 is very into cooking and flavors, and I could see him being a chef when he grows up.

amother

Sienna

Tue, Sep 03 2019, 11:48 pm

Other than an occasional pan of brownies, cooking was functional and not fun. It was a necessity that was accomplished while my mom was completely exhausted and my dad, who kept the same hours as she did, got to lie down.

When I got married, I was determined to be more fun and artistic about it. To this day, 15 years later, I love cooking when I get to be creative but hate it when it feels like an obligation that nobody in my family shares with me. I do it anyway, of course.

dankbar

Wed, Sep 04 2019, 1:48 am

We used to help with rolling the rugelech. Filling & closing the turnovers & kreplach.
Then later my mom taught me to braid challas & used to leave it to me to do when she had to leave house while dough was rising.
When I was in hi school, mom got home from work about six & I would get home from school about 4:30, so I would mostly finish up making the dinner, so that it would be ready when mom & boys got home.
She would bread cutlets, I would fry them.
She would make mixture for patties or meatballs, I would form them & drop them into pot.
She would make mixture for nokerlech & I would drop them into boiling tomato soup.
If there was nothing started, I would create simple meals from scratch like hotdogs & fries. Cook corn on the cob, potatoes, pasta. rice.
She would prepare mixture for tuna patties or cheese latkes, I would form & fry.
After wedding, I experimented even more in kitchen, loved cooking because I knew basics.
Didn't mind cooking dinners right after wedding, when I had off from work & had time to patchke.

essie14

Wed, Sep 04 2019, 3:37 am

I chose this option
"My mom taught me all the techniques needed to make amazing food"
but it's not really accurate. My mom doesn't enjoy cooking but everything she makes is really good, albeit a little repetitive. Like for 4 meals of a Yom Tov (#ilovelivinginIsraelnow Smile

) she will make the exact same food for both dinners and both lunches.
She taught me how to make all the things she cooks and as I got older (teenager) she let me have free reign in the kitchen to make other dishes. I took on more responsibility for preparing meals as I got older. My grandmother also taught me a lot about cooking. I enjoy it much more than my mom does.