Until I was in high school, my family had dinner together every night no matter how little time we had until swim practice. Eventually schedules were so disparate that we all couldn’t be in the same place at the same time, but there was always a home cooked meal floating around. We hardly ever ate out or ordered in anything other than pizza once a month if we were lucky. As both my parents worked, meals were designed to be relatively easy to throw together at the end of the day—hence lots of easy-to-turn-into-leftovers meals and casseroles. I’m sure there was a financial component to all of this—feeding four ravenous and active kids can get expensive—but I think my parents were also concerned with making sure we were healthy and had adequate nutrition for our year-round sports activities, something that is easier to ensure when you know exactly what they are eating.
One thing my mother loved to do, particularly around Christmas time, is bake. Fortunately, she was willing to let us help out (i.e. make a mess) and after many years of practice I’m pretty confident in saying that while my pies may not always look spectacular, they sure as hell taste good. While I cooked some in high school, I was not particularly adventurous and confined myself to things my mom made often, like lasagna, chili, and this awesome angel hair pasta with plum tomatoes and basil dish. I stopped living at home after I went to college, spending all of my summers during school in Williamstown and New York, which meant that I had to start cooking for myself more regularly. Even senior year, when I wasn’t on a meal plan, I stuck to a general list of 5-10 recipes that I cycled through. The idea of wasting food if I made something I didn’t like (such as asparagus and parmesan risotto) was terrifying.
After graduating, it took me about a year to really start trying new things. Midway through last winter, I realized that I was eating next to no vegetables and really need to get creative if I was going to not get completely out of shape and unhealthy. Lots of Food Network and a trip to Barnes and Noble for cookbooks, in addition to some generous cutting of recipe portions, helped spark a different approach to cooking. The awesome farmer’s market in Harvard Square this summer/fall has also encouraged me to think outside of my comfort zone.
Generally, I try to make 3-4 things for myself a week, one of which will be something new or a new approach to a recipe that I’ve made before. Last week was curried butternut squash soup (post on that forthcoming), the week before a butternut squash, mushroom, and pea risotto. This weekend was a new approach to applesauce (introduced a blender, still on the fence about the texture), and this coming weekend may be something with pumpkin. I try to stick to local/seasonal foods as much as possible, but in the wintertime in New England that gets significantly difficult if you don’t want to be eating turnips the whole time.
Even though I come at cooking from a baking background, I have no problem adjusting recipes to suit my needs, particularly when there are ingredients I don't like. Things I do like: potatoes, fruit, pasta, potatoes, bread, potatoes, potatoes. Seriously, if there was one thing I could only ever eat again, it would be potatoes. So delicious. I'm also a big fan of the Barefoot Contessa, detest Rachael Ray, and live by the Joy of Cooking and Betty Crocker cookbook. I like simple flavors and combinations, and would rather eat something with two or three ingredients than twelve or thirteen.
Before this gets obscenely long, I’ll leave you with one kitchen lesson from my childhood: Do not leave rubber cleaning gloves anywhere near a gas stove when the stove is on, because they will catch on fire (who knew?). Should you have a mini rubber apocalypse on your hands, do not freak out and throw the gloves on your linoleum kitchen floor, because the linoleum will melt into the shape of Alaska. Also, your parents will be very unhappy and you will not be allowed to make macaroni and cheese while home alone again until you are old enough to date. Which is never, for your dad.
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