KItchen Time-NOT!

I've spent 50 years preparing food first by helping my mother with her family cooking and following up with cooking for my own family. I just have to share a few examples and some random thoughts about what food means to me.


First of all, I'll just come out and say it:  I'm tired of the kitchen. Every evening I put  together a simple protein meal accompanied by a fruit and a vegetable. It's fairly easy and if Pat wants anything else, he prepares it himself. 

Furthermore, I am no longer interested in fixing holiday meals.I broke the news early in the year that we are going out for Thanksgiving, joining close friends (thanks, Penny!) for a Christmas morning brunch, and planning other holiday events around easy potlucks. Such a plan will avoid the sticky discussion about who will join whom for the special meal and I won't have to ever again try to make the Norman Rockwell scene of the family being served the just perfect turkey. Too, my house will stay uncluttered with crumb free counters and the ugly dead carcass in the refrigerator. No  more turkey soup for days on end.

In my early years of working with food, I pored over recipes in women's magazines and began collecting cookbooks until I couldn't fit them into regular kitchen space.  My first cookbook was The Hate To Cook Book  by Peg Bracken. It is now held together with rubber bands and paper clips and I can't give it up. I kept a few others such as Peg's other books and one or two others with titles like Five Ingredient Recipes and 100 Crockpot Recipes. I also have a 3-ring binder loaded with recipes I've received or stolen from other people. That's it. The whole collection fits on one slim shelf in my pantry.

And here's my cooking confession:  I fed my kids baby food from jars found at the grocery store, bologna sandwiches and Doritos for lunch, and dinners with iceberg lettuce salad or even the horrifying "fruit" salad made from Jello! All I really needed in my pantry was instant rice, a can or two of cream of whatever soup, some frozen vegetables and an occasional banana or apple. I served all this with fried cube steak, fried chicken, or spaghetti made from sauce that included fried ground sirloin (read hamburger). Guess what. . .we're all alive and successfully passing by organic foods with each visit to the grocery store.

So here's a little test for you. And if you can get 100%, I'll share a box of See's Candy with you.  

Identify and/or describe the following: 
1. kohlrabi
2. pomegranate molasses
3. castelvetrano olives
4. piment d'espelette
5. cotija cheese

I found these items in a local paper and a woman's magazine so don't think I've gone all snobbish and read one of those gourmet magazines. I still prefer one pan meals that can be on the table in 20 minutes.

P.S. Just sayin'- my family all sat together for the evening meal and were often joined by the kids' friends who marveled over this ancient eating custom wondering where we kept our TV trays.