A Dinner Form Girl ::: snippets
My mom writes a weekly column for several papers here in the "Mississippi" South. I've share a few in the past. And I keep intending to share more. She just emailed me the one that is running soon. I thought this might be as good a time as any to share it!
My pitiful cooking reputation didn’t come easy. Over the years, I’ve carefully nurtured the notion that I don’t know a turnip from a toothpick, which eliminates a host of kitchen duties from my daily life. My sister Kathy reminded me last weekend that my own beloved father made this statement, seriously, on more than one occasion: “Don’t let Beth bring the potato salad. She’ll buy it at the grocery store.”
Well, yeah . . . and why not? That’s darn good potato salad at the grocery store. But you think I was offended by that comment and the thousands of others that have been made about my cooking? Uh huh . . . I’ll leave the fools sweating over a hot stove, tuck a book under my arm, and sob all the way to my recliner. Ha ha.
Folks can tease me; I don’t care because I laugh at myself. I’m like Phyliss Diller. She once quipped that her cooking was so bad her “kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.”
So it was with great surprise that I opened a birthday envelope from son Will and daughter-in-law Jamie to find a gift certificate for a cooking demo at the Viking headquarters in Greenwood. Momentarily I was speechless. Umm, was there a mistake? I don’t WANT to learn how to cook. I’ve got hubby G-Man, plus family and friends, perfectly trained to put food on my table. Good food. Not just attractive and nutritious, but really, really tasty.
Jamie quickly sensed my distress as I stared at the writing on the card. “Bebe,” she said, patting me gently on the arm, “you won’t have to cook, I promise. You just watch, and then you get to eat.”
Now, there’s a plan, thought I. Sit me down with a white linen napkin in my lap, promise me divine edibles, and I will be patient as the visiting chef struts his stuff.
I figured I’d be way out of my league, and I almost was. As the chef gave his entertaining demonstration, I actually caught a word or two I could define.
Like confit. This was a wild game cooking class, and the instructor, Chef John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, prepared duck and rabbit and venison. I heard him say “confit” at one point – I think it was while he was messing with the duck leg – and I knew that word because I guessed it correctly in a Trivial Pursuit game with girlfriends the week before (only by process of elimination).
Then there were other catchy “chef words and phrases,” names for stuff like foie gras and herb/zucchini galette, Worcestershire béarnaise, bourbon cream – not exactly staples on the Jacks table, although I’m guessing they’d probably go just fine with greens and cornbread.
And there were additional directions and statements I understood as the chef chopped and mixed and slathered, only a few, but that didn’t matter. The dishes he put before us were spectacular, and I waddled out of there like a stuffed goose. The chef was happy and I was happier – which is precisely why some of us should be chefs and some of us should be eaters.
As Peg Bracken, author of the “I Hate To Cook Cookbook,” says, “you don’t get over hating to cook any more than you get over having big feet.” If the good Lord had meant for me to be a decent cook he’d have done something different with my genes – like given me an affinity for stirring sauces or speaking French or any number of other chef-like attributes. I know my limitations. Honestly, as the bumper sticker says, “You’re in trouble if you’ve got to depend on a smoke alarm as a timer.”
Yes, there are those who are made for the paring knife and others of us whose hands fit better around the handle of a dinner fork. I am – unashamedly, my friends – a most appreciative and enthusiastic dinner fork girl.
------------------------------------------------
“Hey, baby, you want fine cooking?
Cause you know what? I got a Swanson’s
dinner in the freezer with your name on it!”
~ J. Fallon
My pitiful cooking reputation didn’t come easy. Over the years, I’ve carefully nurtured the notion that I don’t know a turnip from a toothpick, which eliminates a host of kitchen duties from my daily life. My sister Kathy reminded me last weekend that my own beloved father made this statement, seriously, on more than one occasion: “Don’t let Beth bring the potato salad. She’ll buy it at the grocery store.”
Well, yeah . . . and why not? That’s darn good potato salad at the grocery store. But you think I was offended by that comment and the thousands of others that have been made about my cooking? Uh huh . . . I’ll leave the fools sweating over a hot stove, tuck a book under my arm, and sob all the way to my recliner. Ha ha.
Folks can tease me; I don’t care because I laugh at myself. I’m like Phyliss Diller. She once quipped that her cooking was so bad her “kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.”
So it was with great surprise that I opened a birthday envelope from son Will and daughter-in-law Jamie to find a gift certificate for a cooking demo at the Viking headquarters in Greenwood. Momentarily I was speechless. Umm, was there a mistake? I don’t WANT to learn how to cook. I’ve got hubby G-Man, plus family and friends, perfectly trained to put food on my table. Good food. Not just attractive and nutritious, but really, really tasty.
Jamie quickly sensed my distress as I stared at the writing on the card. “Bebe,” she said, patting me gently on the arm, “you won’t have to cook, I promise. You just watch, and then you get to eat.”
Now, there’s a plan, thought I. Sit me down with a white linen napkin in my lap, promise me divine edibles, and I will be patient as the visiting chef struts his stuff.
I figured I’d be way out of my league, and I almost was. As the chef gave his entertaining demonstration, I actually caught a word or two I could define.
Like confit. This was a wild game cooking class, and the instructor, Chef John Currence of City Grocery in Oxford, prepared duck and rabbit and venison. I heard him say “confit” at one point – I think it was while he was messing with the duck leg – and I knew that word because I guessed it correctly in a Trivial Pursuit game with girlfriends the week before (only by process of elimination).
Then there were other catchy “chef words and phrases,” names for stuff like foie gras and herb/zucchini galette, Worcestershire béarnaise, bourbon cream – not exactly staples on the Jacks table, although I’m guessing they’d probably go just fine with greens and cornbread.
And there were additional directions and statements I understood as the chef chopped and mixed and slathered, only a few, but that didn’t matter. The dishes he put before us were spectacular, and I waddled out of there like a stuffed goose. The chef was happy and I was happier – which is precisely why some of us should be chefs and some of us should be eaters.
As Peg Bracken, author of the “I Hate To Cook Cookbook,” says, “you don’t get over hating to cook any more than you get over having big feet.” If the good Lord had meant for me to be a decent cook he’d have done something different with my genes – like given me an affinity for stirring sauces or speaking French or any number of other chef-like attributes. I know my limitations. Honestly, as the bumper sticker says, “You’re in trouble if you’ve got to depend on a smoke alarm as a timer.”
Yes, there are those who are made for the paring knife and others of us whose hands fit better around the handle of a dinner fork. I am – unashamedly, my friends – a most appreciative and enthusiastic dinner fork girl.
------------------------------------------------
Thanks for sharing Mom. I love it !
~wj
Labels: personal
posted by wiljax at 6:43 PM
1 Comments:
Waiting for some winter wonderland pics....
CD
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