Baking New Year

I don’t bake much in January or February.  I think it’s because we’re coming off Christmas and an overdose of baked sweet treats.  Cookies, candies, Yule Logs, and more cookies!

Also, it's the new year and you think you want to start anew and be healthier.  Resolution city.

By late January, weeks had gone by without bakes.  Watching the Australian Open early one morning, I craved something sweet to accompany my coffee.  That craving me led to something that’s been on my to do list in the kitchen:  go to bakes.  

Planning my bakes is my usual operating procedure.  I bake on the weekends so during the week I plan, check my ingredients, get some groceries if I need them.  Weekend bakes give me something to look forward to and if I want to make something involved, I have the time.

But hey, I might wake up on a Saturday and think, I want something sweet today!  Right now!  And then I get all twisted up because I haven’t a clue what to bake.  So here’s a resolution.  Make a list of bakes I can whip up on the spot!  Commit!

I feel like my mom would always have something up her sleeve if she wanted a quick sweet snack.  I think she was always whipping up something sweet because she had a box mix or a tube of something in the fridge.  Voila!  Muffins in twenty minutes.  “You want some orange danish?  I can make that happen in ten minutes.”

I haven’t had a box mix in my pantry for years, for health reasons as well as snobby chef reasons.  So impromptu bakes haven’t had solid representation in my repertoire.

Options?

Muffins.  I don’t always have berries depending on the time of year.  G isn’t a fan of nuts or coconut or zucchini or pumpkin or poppyseed or carrot or raisins.  Our fave is apple cranberry but I don't always have that either.  Also, filling Individual tins takes longer than just scooping dough into one pan.  This is all about finding the quickest route to baked goodness.

Scones.  See:  muffins.

Quick breads.  These have historically led to bananas.  Oh, bananas.  You’re always on the counter slowly turning brown as I walk by you everyday.  I used to use bananas as my go to bake item.  Banana muffins, banana bread.  But at a certain point, enough was enough.  I was never truly in love with a banana bake, but it was an easy thing to do.  I’ve become blasé about bakes with bananas.  If I never have a piece of banana bread again, I’ll be fine.

Coffee cakes.  A lot of coffee cakes are labor or time intensive.  Some are yeast based, so a quick breakfast treat is out of the question.  Some are bundt cakes, which take a at least 45 minutes to an hour to bake and then longer to cool.  I’ve always been a sucker for coffee cake, even when I wasn’t drinking coffee yet.

I found a promising coffee cake recipe in one of my ace breakfast cookbooks, Big Bad Breakfast.  It called for an 8” cake pan, and it was quick to throw together.  It didn't have a long cooling time either.

And wouldn’t you know it, I had bananas that were ignored all week so I smashed up two for the cake. But this recipe included sour cream, nutmeg, cinnamon and a crunchy topping so I had a hunch that banana flavor wasn’t the leading character.  Usually I would leave out the nuts, but I toasted the pecans and chopped them as finely as possible.  It was a gamble, but my sweet craving made me go for it.

Author says, “glaze is optional, but you’d be an idiot not to.”  How could I not take that bait?  Again, I had all I needed to whisk up the glaze so I did.  And G loves a glaze.

For a treat that’s not chocolate nor a donut, this coffee cake was a big hit.  G even went back for seconds.  

This is definitely going into the spontaneous weekend bake rotation.

Tooth Fairy

My baby teeth were perfect.

Straight, perfect enamel soldiers in order, in alignment, at attention.

Then I was told the story about the tooth fairy.  

Wait, my teeth are going to fall out?  And I get money for them?  And new grown up teeth grow in?

OK, if you say so.

Finding money under my pillow and not having to do anything for it?  Fine by me.

But then one by one my teeth started growing in and they weren’t perfect at all.  They weren’t at attention soldiers.  They were lazy and crooked and didn’t care about giving me a beautiful smile at all.  In fact, one of my front teeth didn’t even show up.  I was born without it.

All of a sudden there I was at ten with a mouth full of permanent teeth that were an utter disappointment.  Braces were a given.

Finally at fourteen, the day came and an orthodontist slapped the metal on my teeth.  I couldn’t decide what was worse.  Looking at my permanent teeth or seeing them with three pounds of metal.

I could barely close my mouth.  I had rubber bands for tension, wax on top of the metal so that it wouldn’t cut the inside of mouth, and at one time a fashionable headpiece to wear at night.  I felt hideous and uncomfortable and I thought it would never end.

I had to go once a month for a checkup and tightening.  I felt like my dad’s VW bug going into the shop.  I’d sit in the chair, they’d pump me up so they could reach my mouth and grab all of these tools to tune me up.

I couldn’t eat for days after an ortho appointment.  Then I’d have to eat jello and pudding and go through tubes of chapstick for the chapped corners of my mouth.

After a few years of this, the Big Day came.  Time to take off the braces!  Good news:  biggest relief of my short life.  Bad news:  at my next dental check up, the dentist said, “Why did they take off your braces?  Your bottom teeth are all pushed forward.  That’s not right.  He’s not done yet.”

Excuse me?  The next thing I knew I was visiting different dentists and orthodontists and finding out that my orthodontist screwed up my teeth.  I found out that my bottom front teeth needed to be fixed.  That my bottom gum was stretched and couldn’t be left like that.

I was told that my orthodontist messed up my mouth and my mouth needed to be fixed.

I sat there in his office with my mom by my side as we told him we were appalled and heartbroken and needed to discuss a remedy.  We negotiated:   the amount of money we spent; the amount of money we were going to now spend to fix it; and my teenage emotional turmoil.

We came to an agreement and he picked up a pen and wrote a check.  I think he gave us almost twenty thousand dollars.  Years later, I realized that was not nearly enough.

All that time and discomfort and my teeth still weren’t perfect.

The summer after high school graduation, I spent more time in the dentist’s chair.  Periodontist consultations.  New orthodontist consultations.  New plans.

I had to have surgery to remove gum tissue from the roof of my mouth and grafted onto the gum in front of my bottom teeth.

So I had packing on the roof of my mouth and new gum tissue that had to heal at the bottom gum.  Nothing but liquid again.  And jello.

The first night home after the periodontist Mom let me sleep on the couch.  Camped out, falling asleep finally to some TV and pain pills.

When I woke up the next morning, I turned my head and saw my pillow soaked in blood.  I jumped up, shrieked, and ran to the bathroom where I saw dried blood all over my face and neck.  Mom found me and calmed me down, this was normal apparently.  I cleaned myself up, Mom set up new sheets and pillows on the couch.

Two weeks later, I was ready to eat some real food.  Mashed potatoes!  I was giddy.  Mom made some, set the plate in front of me, and said, OK, now you can eat this but go slow.  Be careful.

As soon as she turned around, I picked up my fork and dug in.  I was starving and I attacked those mashed potatoes with gusto.  Warm and creamy and tasty and salty.  And then I realized I’d swallowed something other than mashed potatoes.

The packing that was left at the roof of my mouth slid down my throat right with those mashed potatoes.  Let the healing begin!

After the gum tissue healed completely, it was time for me to visit an oral surgeon.  I was born without a tooth, my left incisor  The new plan was to remove the matching one on the right side and the two corresponding bottom teeth.  Then the orthodontist would close the gaps.

More time in the chair.  More healing.  More jello.

Time to slap on the metal.  Again.  By this time, I was heading to college.  Just what a young woman wants.  Going away to college and having braces on for the second time.  Packing for my first time away from home and I still had to pack rubber bands, and wax, and headgear.

This time, the orthodontist knew what he was doing.  My teeth were pushed together, straightened properly, the bottom teeth went back to their proper place.  No gum issues.

The braces came off.  And before my college graduation.  Win, win.

It was a bit anticlimactic though.  All that work and my teeth were…fine.  They were straight.  But they still weren’t great teeth.  All the years of pushing and pulling and metal led to pretty dull teeth.  Because the incisors were removed, the canines were next to my front teeth.  Yeah, my teeth were officially done with orthodontics, but there wasn’t a ticker tape parade or anything.  There was a huge sigh of relief.  Probably a huge sigh of relief from my parents and their bank account. But the result wasn’t perfect.  A beautiful smile?  A decent smile.

I took a break from dentists except for the six month cleanings.  

A couple years later, I learned that veneers were a possibility.  I started to look into it and I decided that my teeth and I deserved more.  I lucked out because insurance paid for half of the tab back then.  Because of all of the mishaps and screwups and the fact that the veneer decision wasn’t just a cosmetic one, insurance paid for half.  My saving grace.  Plus, my mom helped me to pay for it.

So I thought I was crazy purposely putting myself back in that chair, but I did it.  Impressions and x-rays and choosing shapes and shades and then.  Six proper top teeth.

Cue fireworks and parade.

I finally had the smile I wanted since that damn tooth fairy started visiting.  I was almost thirty years old.

Fast forward to Christmas 2021.

The veneers have aged like I have.  Sigh.

Over the years, my bite has changed.  Stress has turned me into a clencher.  At one point, they made me a retainer so that my teeth wouldn’t move any more than they already had.

Around 2019 I knew that the day was coming near to replace the veneers.  They had a good run.  Almost twenty years old.

I started to think about thinking about replacing them some time later in 2022.

Then a week before Christmas I made myself lunch and sat down with an episode of Murder, She Wrote.  All of a sudden, I was crunching extra hard on something, thinking, well, that’s not right.  That was an odd crunchy crouton.

Looked in the mirror and saw my old tooth staring back at me, veneer less.  That left incisor veneer let loose and I’d eaten it for lunch.

Before I started hyperventilating, I called the dentist.  They got me in two days later.

Seeing that old tooth did me in.  All of the memories came back.  That tooth that I hadn’t seen in years…so small.  So haggard.  Not the right shape for its place in my mouth.  It brought tears to my eyes.

G took me to the dentist.  The dentist and I had talked earlier this year about the impending veneer replacement so this wasn’t a total surprise visit.

He had a cancellation that afternoon and said, If I was ready and wanted to go, he’d start the process that very day.

My eyes got wide, matching my mouth, with lip retractors in place.

The emotions sitting in that chair!  Gratitude tears filling my eyes.  Now?  I can start this right now?  Anxiety rattling my bones.  Now?  I can start this right now?

Let’s do it.

Before G left me there, he asked me what I wanted to eat after the appointment.  “Anything but jello.”

The next thing I knew, they’d given me a little pillow behind my head, a little blanket for my legs.  They turned on the massage function on the chair.  They asked me what music I’d like to hear while the dentist worked on removing the old veneers.  

Not only did the dentist have time for me that day, but the lab guy (my new BFF) was in as well and immediately made the temporary teeth.

Five hours later, G came back to find me with a temporary set of beautiful teeth. He also showed up with a mango smoothie.  Perfection.

Just after the new year, I got the new veneers.

The nerves started settling in the day before.  Anxiety about sitting in that chair for hours again.  But I was excited.  The day was circled and in big letters on my calendar.

The dentist and I opted to do eight upper teeth instead of six to fill out my smile.  It was the right decision.  

The upshot is these veneers are better than my original ones.  My old veneers did their job.  They served me well and lasted a good long time.  But they lacked…personality.  They were like six white chiclets in a row.  The shape and spacing of these new teeth is so much better.  The front teeth are front teeth.  The incisors are incisors.  I’ve never had canines before.  I’m in love with my canines.  Technology and materials are better now.  This dentist and his lab are thoughtful magicians.

This is the best my smile has looked since that tooth fairy flew away with my perfect baby teeth.

Spice Rack

It’s the time of year I do an inventory and make my annual spice order.

I wanted to end that sentence with multiple exclamation points.  I consider this a big event!

I take my spice collection seriously.  I inherited that from my mom.  Mom’s collection of recipes was vast.  Because she liked to try new recipes, she had quite a few spices.  I was pretty excited when I finally grew to the point where I could open up the spice cupboard and nose around.  Luckily for me, the spices were on the bottom shelf.  I never grew enough to reach the second shelf.

Mom always had a turntable of spices and little plastic baskets for envelopes of spice mixes and rubs.  She was a big fan of Lawry’s spice mixes for chili, stew, Stroganoff.

Her turntable included a variety of spices, but leaned heavily on baking spices for that sweet tooth of hers.  She had whole and ground spices so from an early age, I knew about the natural form of spiky cloves, tiny allspice orbs, and sticks of cinnamon.  She had little bottles of extracts that I equated to magic potions, super charged aromas of vanilla, almond, and  peppermint. 

I remember when Mom and I found real nutmeg.  Somehow we read or heard that it was much better than the ground nutmeg from our local grocery store.  We picked up a little bag of the acorns of nutmeg, bought a rasp, and never looked back.  We felt so sophisticated.

When I moved into my first apartment, Mom made sure to set me up with my own spice collection.  She always made sure that I had a good turntable and she taught me to line it with a circle of waxed paper or contact paper so it would be easy to clean.

I realize that I’ve followed in my mom’s footsteps.  The more I cook, the longer I cook, the more I want to experiment with new spices.  I have two turntables now and a basket of bags of spices.  Whenever I reach for one it makes me happy.  When I want to try a new recipe, I can say, Oh, I have that spice!  Or wait, what is that?  I need to find that one and try it.

I have a few standards on my turntable now, like my homemade taco seasoning.  Once I learned how much salt was in those seasoning envelopes at the store, I started making my own.  Years ago I tried Emeril’s Essence seasoning and have had a jar of that on hand ever since.  I make cinnamon sugar and keep it handy for G.  His beloved grandma put that on his toast when he was a kid so it’s a tradition here.

Once I started cooking more, I invested in a grinder devoted to spices.  Having whole spices to toast and grind for rubs is a bonus for a spice nut like me.  Studying global cuisines has led me to making my own garam masala and toasting and grinding dried chiles for mole.  I’ve collected different chili powders like ancho and chipotle, sweet, hot, and smoked paprikas.  I’ve learned about Middle Eastern blends of Za’atar and Baharat, Ras el hanout from Northern Africa.  i keep a small collection of different salts and peppercorns.  I keep those whole spices of clove, allspice and star anise for batches of wassail and cider in the fall and winter.  

When we lived in Michigan, there was a Penzey’s spice store north of Detroit.  Whenever we were in the vicinity, I’d make G stop there for a stroll through the aisles.  In addition to the jars you could buy at the grocery store, they had small, medium, and large bags of spices so I could buy more of something I really liked or used a lot.

I found a neighborhood spice shop in San Francisco too, Spice Ace (no longer there).  My friend Rachel and I would peruse the shelves and shelves of spices from all over the world along with salt and pepper mills and mortars and pestles.

Since we’ve moved so much in the last few years, I started to order spices online from Savory Spice since I can’t depend on a local spice store.  I look forward to the fall when it’s time for my annual spice order to load up my turntables and get ready for the holiday cooking and baking season.

My delivery just arrived!

Big Night

Did I ever tell you about the time I met Stanley Tucci?

When his indie opus, Big Night, premiered in 1996, he did a tour of arthouse theaters to personally introduce his labor of love.  

He happened to stop in Cleveland to show the film at the Centrum Theater in Coventry. I happened to belong to the Cleveland Film Society.  It was kismet.  

As a member, I got free passes to see movies before they were released to theaters, discounts, and I volunteered at the Cleveland International Film Festival where I saw special screenings like Psycho on the big screen with Janet Leigh.  Once in a while, the film society sent out invitations to special events like Stanley Tucci and Big Night. 

Mr. Tucci took questions after the film and then we all drove to a local Italian restaurant and had dinner together.

I was still so shy then.  I think all I said was thank you, I loved your film. I smiled and nodded at everything he said.  And prayed I didn't have sauce on my chin.

All the things I could’ve said.  Where in Italy should I visit first? What are your favorite restaurants? What’s been your most challenging acting role so far?  And the deep dive questions…What was it like to grow up around George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst?  Can you believe years from now Jim from The Office will be your brother-in-law?

   

In 1996, my culinary journey was still in its infancy.  Besides my life long love affair with pizza, I’d only just started to learn about real Italian food.  I’d grown up with the usuals:  spaghetti and meatballs; frozen cheese ravioli; good old fashioned lasagna. 

I suppose now is the time I tell you about my friend, Mary.  I met her on the first day of the first job I had after college.  She’s 100% Italian.  A cook beyond measure.  My idol in so many ways.  And she’s been a lot better friend to me than Stanley.  No offense, Stanley, but I haven’t heard from you since that big night in 1996.

Mary was the one who took me to Gallucci’s on the East Side of Cleveland where we tasted buffalo mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, and different olive oils.  She introduced me to this tiny authentic Italian restaurant called Stino da Napoli, near our Rocky River office.  I ordered something called gnocchi and was never the same again.  I wrote about making ravioli with Mary here.

I’ve always wanted to write about my Big Night with Stanley Tucci.  He and his love of Italian food have been back in the news with a new show, Stanley Tucci:  Searching for Italy.  He just won an Emmy for it this month.  And it happens to be, mama mia, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Big Night.

Have you ever seen the film?  It’s a gem.  Tucci and Tony Shalhoub play Italian immigrant brothers who own a struggling restaurant in the 1950’s.  

The centerpiece of the film is the making of the timpano, a massive molded casserole of pasta and cheese and meat wrapped in sheets of pasta and baked.  I’ve always wanted to attempt to make one.

Now seemed the perfect time.

I borrowed The Tucci Cookbook from the library.  I searched the internet for other versions of the timpano and studied recipes.

First hurdle?  The mold.  What the heck do you make it in?  A special mold devoted to timpanos?  I live in an apartment and don’t have a lot of space for items with one use. A le Creuset pot?  I didn’t want to make a full size timpano when It was just me and G who are going to eat it. A stainless steel bowl?   I wasn’t sure if the stainless steel bowl I have was oven proof.  I searched my cupboards high and low (and this isn't easy for me.  I'm barely 5'1" tall.)

I wanted to make most of the ingredients myself.  I circled a day on the calendar for the assembly and the feasting of the timpano.  A few days ahead of time, I started the process.  I made the red sauce.  I made the meatballs.  I boiled the eggs.  I grated the pecorino Romano cheese.  I made the pasta for lining the mold.  I drew the line on making the pasta that goes on the inside.  A bag of penne from the store was perfectly fine for that part of the recipe.  I was ambitious, but not crazy.

I assembled all of my ingredients and went to work.  I make fresh pasta once every five years or so?  So it's like doing it for the first time each time.  It sure is satisfying though.

The chosen casserole dish, liberally greased with butter and olive oil.

The first layer of goodness, penne pasta in marinara sauce.  

Then it was time for Genoa salami, cubes of provolone cheese, hard boiled eggs, meatballs, and pecorino Romano cheese.

I sealed the top the best I could and placed it in the oven and crossed my fingers.

After an hour and a half in the oven, thirty minutes more of sitting on the cooling rack, it was time to unveil the timpano.

Here's the beauty resting again before it was time to slice open.

And drum roll, please...

Could I be any more proud?  A triumphant way to honor the film, my evening with Mr. Tucci, and my personal culinary journey.

Pickiest Eater Ever

When I graduated with a culinary degree, those who'd known me the longest were astounded.  And definitely amused.  As someone labeled the pickiest eater ever for most of my young life, it was surprising to me too.  A fork in the road that I hadn't seen coming.  I wanted to examine it and write about it.

I started years ago by sitting down with my mom to interview her about my childhood relationship with food.

"Well, this will be a short discussion.  You didn't have one."

So she exaggerated, but not by much.  We counted maybe five things I considered good enough to eat?  Cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, pizza and…we couldn’t even make it to five.  Stumped.  Let’s count pizza twice.  Pretty sure I ate enough of that to count it twice.

I had no interest in food nor learning how to cook.  I didn't want to try anything new.  I did have a little play kitchen, but I enjoyed that because I got to pretend, not because I wanted to make a meal.  Making up stories and characters and settings was always my go to.  Food and eating were just boring chores in an otherwise wondrous pretend world.  All I wanted to do was pretend, read, sing into my Donny & Marie microphone, and watch my TV shows.  My mom and dad had to drag me to the dining table to make me sit down and eat a little something.

It was the 1970’s.  The era of fondue, gelatin salads, pre-made box mixes like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Hamburger Helper, and Swanson TV dinners.  Grilling in the summertime.  Slow cookers in the cold, never-ending Ohio winters.  

My mom liked to collect recipes, try new dishes.  One of the drawers in the kitchen held an array of recipe cards.  It was pure Mom.  The recipes were alphabetized, categorized, and typewritten.  I loved sifting through the recipes, fingers slipping on the plastic sleeves that encased each card, admiring the sometimes handwritten ones with Mom’s perfect cursive.  I learned the words canapé, tetrazzini, stroganoff, and fricassee.

In the 1970's, at family functions, there was always a relish tray with pickles, olives, peppers, beets, celery, salami, or ham.  As a bashful only child in a turbulent family, I craved stillness and peace, not meals.  If we were at a gathering with more than just immediate family, I shied away from the crowd.  I’d stake out a corner where I could carefully wait for a lull at the buffet table.  When no one was there, I’d scurry over and choose ten black olives, place one on each finger, return to my quiet place and snack away.  When another lull occurred, I'd return to the relish tray and restock my fingertips.  Mom’s response to those who commented on my never eating much, “Don’t worry.  When she’s hungry, she’ll eat.”

Takeout wasn’t a usual thing at our house, so whenever it happened it was an event.  Family legend has it that at age three I ate shrimp by the fistful. Mom said they would take me to Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips on Friday nights when there was a shrimp dinner special.  I don't have any recollection of this.  The next time I ate a shrimp, I was in my thirties.

My maternal grandparents owned vacation cottages on Lake Erie so the whole family worked there during tourist season, April-October.  All that togetherness meant a lot of meals together.  On rare occasions, they’d order buckets of KFC.  I’d peel off that finger-licking breading and give the chicken leg or thigh to the closest grownup. 

Ordering in was not the norm though since my Grandma fancied herself quite the cook.  Grandma was proud of her kitchen skills, cooked with a beer in her hand, and enjoyed providing abundant meals.  Unfortunately, no one in the family enjoyed eating them.

At every meal, she served enough to feed not just ours, but three other dysfunctional families.  I once asked why she made so much and it turned into a history lesson about the Great Depression.  “Kids who grew up during the Depression never had enough food to eat.  They turned into adults who always wanted plenty of food on the table.”

At all those meals and family get togethers, the recurring theme was, "What is Kim going to eat?"

I did eat.  Just in my own way.

When Mom made chicken paprikas, I ate the dumplings, but passed on the chicken.  Mrs. T’s pierogies with kielbasa?  I skipped the kielbasa and loaded up on pierogies topped with sautéed onion and sour cream.  Shish kebabs on the grill?  I ate the grilled vegetables and the Rice-a-Roni side dish. 

If Mom stumbled onto something that I did eat, it was like she won the food lottery.  She would stock up so that she always knew she had something I would deign to eat.  Whenever I did like something out of the ordinary, my family was always astounded by what it was and scoffed.  Lamb patties, Stouffer’s spinach souffle?  Seriously?

A typical school day started with a bowl of Cheerios, usually with berries or banana.  I had to pack my own lunch and always the night before so that I didn't run late in the morning.  My bagged lunch was the same for years, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, fruit, and a Capri-Sun.  (A special perk:  Mom froze the Capri-Sun's so that they'd stay nice and cold for me by lunchtime.)  Dinner was always cooked by mom.  Dad loved to eat, but he did not cook.  I think the only time I’d see him in the kitchen was when he’d make a trip to our junk food drawer.

My teen years brought changes, as they do.  Dad found out he had high blood pressure and needed to address that and lower his cholesterol.  All of a sudden, words like whole wheat, olive oil, yogurt, and wait for it, salad were introduced into our food vocabulary.  I’m pretty sure before this event happened, salad only meant lettuce in a bowl with tomatoes (but not for me, tomatoes, yuck), croutons, bacon bits from a jar, and was liberally doused with French Catalina dressing.

Next up, braces were slapped onto my teeth along with the joys of wax, rubber bands, and night guards.  The question turned into, “What CAN Kim eat?”  This ushered in the Jell-O and pudding era.  As a teenager, I felt like that era would never end.  More often than not, I’d have a smorgasbord of Jell-O to choose from after each monthly orthodontic appointment.  “What will it be today?  Orange or lime?  Strawberry or black cherry?” Mom would say as she opened the fridge and played Vanna White.  This was also about the time I started a committed relationship with Taco Bell bean burritos; they were inexpensive, required no chewing, and somewhat tasty when doused in mild sauce.

In eighth grade, it was time to choose my first electives, home economics or shop. Shop was out of the question.  I had enough self awareness by then to realize gracefulness and coordination were not my strengths.  I liked playing piano and enjoyed having all my fingers.  I left home ec with the knowledge that the only thing domestic about me was that I lived in a house.  Oh, and I left with a recipe for something called a Tuesday Pancake that turned into a family favorite.  (Instructions: crack eggs into a blender and add flour, sugar, milk.  Press the blend button.  Pour into hot skillet with melted butter.  Bake in the oven for twenty minutes.)  Decades later, I discovered that I’d been making a Dutch Baby since age thirteen.

By high school, signature meals appeared. Dad worked nights at that time so Mom and I were on our own for dinner during the week.  I always felt like Mom was freed from the responsibility of making family dinners Monday-Friday without Dad around.  She didn’t have to provide a meat and potatoes dinner and she didn’t have to provide it at a specific and dedicated dinnertime.  Mom and I ate whatever she felt like making and eating herself, whenever we wanted to eat.  Some of our favorites were Campbell's tomato soup topped with croutons, grilled cheese and sweet pickles, Steak-Umm’s, Stouffer’s French bread pizzas, and breakfast for dinner.

My involvement in the kitchen at that time became setting and clearing the table and washing dishes.  Still no cooking.  Then, I cut open my hand while washing a glass and got stitches for the first time.  This mishap easily became another excuse to excuse myself from the kitchen.

When I went off to college, the dining hall offerings did nothing to improve my food experience.  Mystery meat, bland sauces, overcooked vegetables.  I ate what I could find and got out of there.  This was when I officially declared myself a vegetarian.  I lived off of the salad bar.  I discovered hummus. Whatever I found to eat in the dining hall was supplemented by pilgrimages to the uptown Taco Bell and pizza deliveries.

After interviewing Mom, writing about all these memories, I can see why I was picky.  My family had no remarkable culinary legacy.  Grandma’s Croatian roots gave us pots of goulash and stuffed cabbage, heavy, dark stews that filled copious amounts of Tupperware for us to take home.  And not eat.  Mom kept a strict budget at home, so only so much money was spent each week at the grocery store.  We didn’t eat out much because of our tight budget.  The years of braces interrupted any phase of becoming interested in food.  The physical act of eating itself was difficult. 

Food didn’t excite me because everything was packaged or boxed or canned.  Potatoes came from boxes, flaked or scalloped.  Biscuits, muffins and rolls came from Pillsbury tubes.  Soggy green beans and slimy mushrooms came to the plate from cans.

Not until road trips in college did my tiny food world begin to expand.  Spring breaks spent in Tennessee taught me about grits and biscuits with honey.  Visiting my college roommate in Cincinnati on summer breaks introduced me to Skyline Chili and Montgomery Inn.  (I said no thanks to the chili, but was still hungry for the knowledge of regional food.)  My college internship on Long Island gifted me the experience of ordering pizza by the slice and different types of pizza at that.  White pizza.  Veggie pizza with roasted red onions, broccoli, and breaded eggplant pieces.  Yes, that made a big impression with me.

Looking at food as another opportunity to learn things fed my ongoing desire to always be a student.  Finally saying yes, when people said, here try this.  

Little did I know that this unremarkable background and these first outings into the world were the start of a path of bread crumbs that led me to a passion for food and cooking.