Did I Learn to Cook From My Mother?

New friends who come to my home for a meal often ask, “Did you learn to cook from your Mom?’’  Before my husband spits his food across the table I explain that food has never been my mother’s thing.  Perhaps that is one big reason she has never had a weight problem.

Cooking in my family was left up to my father and me.  Everyone once in a while my mother would try and jump in and try to prepare something when my parents were having one of their many dinner parties.  I will never forget one particular party when she must have been feeling guilty about the amount of work my father was doing.  While he was out on the tractor cutting the grass she stopped him mid-cut and asked if she could make something.  He knew this was a crapshoot so he suggested she make a hors d’oeuvre knowing that it was not a lynch pin item in his menu.

This being the early 1970’s I’m sure my mother consulted her 1959 version of the joy of cooking, and found a crab and shrimp canapé she thought sounded terribly elegant.  Off she went to the store to purchase the needed ingredients.  Have I mentioned that not only did my Mom not like to cook she disliked spending money even more, especially on food.  Once at the Village Market, our very expensive local grocery she looked at the price of crab and at the price of shrimp, be them both canned, and decided she could substitute something cheaper for one of them.

Back at home she busily opened the cans and followed the recipe to a T with the one substitution.  As she was finishing my father appeared in the kitchen ready to begin the real cooking with me.  Proud of her accomplishment she asked us to taste her little canapé.  My father who never met a food he did not like popped the little canapé into his mouth and after a chew or two, rushed over to the sink and spit it out.  “What the #$%& is that?”

“It is crab and shrimp,” my mother said.  “Really?” he asked.  “Oh, the shrimp was too expensive so I substituted tuna.”  What was really expensive was throwing way the whole lot of the canapés.  It was a while before she volunteered to cook for a party again.

I learned to cook out of necessity, but I hear from so many friends that they never learned to do what their mother’s were good at be it sewing or cooking or some other talent because their mother did it for them.  I count my blessings that my mother could not cook, it made me the cook I am today.  I wonder what my daughter will be good at that I am unable to do now.