Archives: An Unpublished Writer's Life (Nonfiction)

Actually, Nonfiction:

Excerpts from Stay Home and Cook, a laugh riot of a cooking primer.

It Doesn't Taste Like Mom's

There are several reasons why your homemade soup or your pork roast never tastes the same way your mother made it. You have the right oven temperature, for the correct amount of time. The soiled and stained recipe card was followed to the letter. Still, you've created a charcoal briquette. A meal fit for the dog dish. It's not something you should dwell upon, trust me. "This wasn't what my mom made. I'll never recreate this meal." Don't fret. Chances are you mom wasn't very good in the kitchen. Maybe she sucked.

Okay, now I've stepped on some toes. Let me explain.

If your parents grew up in the fifties or sixties, or even before they did not live in an age where creativity and diversity in the kitchen existed beyond a new-age gadget or a space age box of ready made cereal. Some of you were lucky to have a mother (or father, come on now) who was handed down traditions based on culture or ethnicity. Italian, Greek, Jewish, Caribbean, Chinese or Southern soul food; you had it pretty good if your mom know what she was doing because grandma had her by her side stirring pots when she was old enough to burn her fingers on the stovetop.

Trouble is, that's probably all your mom could cook, if she cooked at all. Maybe your mother knew their way around a wok, but when it came to a nice steak, she turned it into a death patty. Maybe you got tired of the same old seasonings and spice. Sure you still love those flavors, but you don't want gumbo or black beans every week of your life. Your roommate might agree.

Then there are the moms who never cooked. Dinner was the time of day when the family sorted through take-out menus or boxes of frozen meals. Your parents were never going to learn or found no need to do so, when there were trained cooks around the corner willing to provide them with lo mein, calzones or Italian subs. Those kids were a shade luckier than the moms who were just terrible. These destruction tastebud killing machines are the same people who cook meat until it's suitable for use in making footballs. The vegetables are a gray mush, and salt and pepper is an afterthought. It's easy to spot the children of these mothers. Each meal is new adventure in taste. Everything they eat is a whirling ecstasy of flavors, from mashed potatoes to pork chops to green beans. It's a miracle if they've ever tasted fish, let alone have a taste for it.

The point is, you can cook better than your mom. You have more at your disposal. Think of the amount of resources you have. There are monstrous sections of every bookstore loaded with cookbooks. Not just recipes, but instruction and ingredients and essay on health and theory and its just ridiculous. Sure mom was the queen of lasagna, but she only had access to one cookbook she bought in 1968. You have the internet. It's full of blogs and chat and stories and weirdos and access to the same information as the bookstore at the mall. You can buy specialty items from the old county your grandma hasn't tasted since before TV. And speaking of TV, years ago there were what, three cooking shows? Try an entire Food Network, not to mention dozens of carbon copy shows and a cooking segment every morning in front of the tourists in New York City.

Grocery stores abound with new products you mom never heard of. Fresh instead of canned vegetables. Cookware that can actually improve food quality. There is a range of brands that scatter the globe that you can choose from. Didn't you ever feel like saying "There's more than iceberg lettuce out there, mom!" If you never thought that, than there is a good chance your tastebuds are dead. Or they've never been born.

Intro
Amy and I worked opposite schedules. She toiled at night in the sweaty kitchens of Florida, and eventually the spiny trees of Oregon. I wrote and tooled around from job to job to pay the bills and be home when the kids were home. As my wife’s career got off the ground it became more and more necessary to learn my way around the kitchen if I wanted to save money, stay alive and avoid jail time for parental neglect. I had to ask the wife, watch some TV and read a few books to get some techniques, but ultimately it was trial and error. I learned how to cook.

I think that’s why so many able bodied home cooks out there give up. They can’t understand why it seems so hard to get the fish cooked like they do in the restaurant. They don’t understand why their steaks taste like house slippers. There are would be chefs out there with kitchens and pans and utensils and spices that piss away hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on sub standard take-out every year, just because they are intimidated by French words and celebrity chefs that make it look too easy.

I think you’re a bunch a lazy whiners.

Cooking isn’t like skiing, playing the piano or juggling. It's not just a skill a person learns in their lifetime for fun. It's necessary for staying alive! You have to eat! Unless you are ludicrously wealthy (in which case, put this book down and help out humanity, why don’t you?), you have to take care of yourself. Maybe your parents didn’t teach you or they didn’t know how. Or, if they did teach you, there are only eight meals they had in their arsenal. Whatever the case, there is no excuse to not know how to cook for yourself, especially when you live in a home with a kitchen!

Let’s face it, some of you can cook some meals. Problem is, they, well…suck. Your girlfriend or boyfriend, your friends, or your new spouse might not have the guts to tell you, there is a very good chance that the meal you are the proudest of makes most people wish they were born without taste buds. Most of you under-season your food or you cook it to death because a kid got sick in South Dakota twenty years ago and you think all veggies must be grey and all meat charcoal-flavored before consumption. You can’t make an easy sauce. You don’t know about searing meat. You put ketchup on your spaghetti.

Maybe you’ve never cared, but you’re ever-expanding gut says its time to lay off the 99-cent menu and make some trans-fat free meals at home. Making that fifty dollar steak at home is pretty easy, plus you can save a few bucks to take that special lady to the ultimate fighting bouts or whatever you do with leftover cash.

Regardless, the point is you probably need to read through this book. And it is a book. I love to write and eat, preferably at the same time. (I’ve gone through 47 keyboards.) It’s not a standard cookbook, because we believe the fancy photography and padded text scares people worse than that kid with rickets in South Dakota. Amy and I have loaded it up with meals a normal human being can make, right now, in the home. All of the pots and pans you have shoved in the cold, cold oven or still in boxes from a wedding shower years ago can be used. You can use that today.
Special occasions, holidays and treats are in here too, but I want to concentrate on Wednesday night dinner. It's that daunting task the American faces. We are so ucky to have abundant grocery stores, farmers markets, and rivers and lakes full of the bounty of nature and most of you guys don’t know what to do with it all. That's okay. I’ve been there. I promise you there are easy ways out of this. Your week does not have to be one pile of scrambled eggs and a double cheese with extra pickles. It can begin the way it always does before you try to cook. You open the fridge, the chicken is thawed out, and you ultimately confess: “Now what the hell do I do?”

Well, here’s what you do.