The Basics: Part 1

I have been having a lot of conversations lately about why I started this blog and why I'm so passionate about food (besides the obvious 'because a girl's gotta eat'). And it wasn't until very recently that I really articulated exactly what that reason is. Yes, I love food: I love to eat it and cook it and talk about it. But that's not why I started this blog. Not really.

I started this blog because I want to fix a lot of things that are broken and only a few of them are directly related to the kitchen:

I started this blog because we live in a world that values electronic transactions over face-to-face interactions and I am afraid that we are losing our country's rich oral tradition. I started this blog because time with our families is taking a back seat to work, school, and countless groups and clubs, which have become obligations rather than activities. I started this blog because I fear that people aren't teaching their children to cook.

One of my favorite phrases to use when I talk about food is that "everybody 'heats' but nobody 'cooks'." Maybe it's because mothers don't stay at home any more or because families are broken but it appears that we have stopped our oral traditions relative to food.

Historically speaking, mothers taught their children - at least their daughters - what had been taught to them by their own mothers and grandmothers and so on. Part of that was cooking.

Traditions and recipes were passed down through the generations.  In many cases grandparents as well as aunts and uncles were all under the same roof and child rearing was a team effort. Part of that was cooking.

In trying to sift through literally hundreds of recipes in order to find the ones that will appear on this blog, something really horrifying occurred to me:  what if you, my readers, are some of those unfortunate souls whose parents didn't teach them how to cook? All of the recipes in the world can't catch you up to speed because, in my opinion, recipes are written for people who already know how to cook.

The next series of blog posts are going to be dedicated to the basics:  things you need to know in order to properly execute a recipe and turn out a delicious masterpiece - or, at the very least, something you'd be willing to eat in your jammies on a Saturday morning.


These posts may seem elementary or overly simplified to some of you and to others they may be wildly helpful. My hope is that you will all come away with some little nugget of information that will make your kitchen life easier, maybe even happier, and that you will pass this knowledge on to someone else.

As always, happy eating!