My parents put adequate plain meals on the table, usually broiled meats,
salads, good bread from the bakery, frozen vegetables. The food
wasn't bad, and I grew up well-fed considering how fussy I was, but no
one ever took joy in the cooking. The one recipe my mother made that
could be considered from scratch was a tomato- meat sauce for pasta, and
that's the first thing I remember making myself. I might have been in
junior high.


I also remember making cookies. This would have been high school. I
had no one to teach me but also no standards to uphold. No one in my
immediate family made cookies. (One grandmother visited once a year and
made hamantaschen with me and my brother.) I must have liked the idea
of exploring new territory on my own. I used recipes from Joy of
Cooking which was one of 2 cookbooks in the house, a wedding gift to my
parents. I got fancy with decorating the rolled cookies making each
into a little work of art by cutting out different shapes and using
colored sugars and twisting the dough different ways.


I did this only when my parents weren't home. It was my own time to
experiment without comment or criticism. I remember one night in
particular when one of my brother's friends came over before going out
with the guys. He would have been 3 years older and therefore someone
for an impressionable girl to have a crush on. He admired the cookies.
I was proud. Only later did I discover that I'd forgotten to grease
the cookie sheet thus making each masterpiece inedibly stuck to the pan.
They had to be soaked off.


--Lia