Paula Deen Didn't Teach Me How To Cook

My mother was a great cook.  She taught me all I knew.  (I use the past tense. After all, via televised cooking shows, I know so much more today.)  Still, long before I left home for college I could confidently fix a complete family meal, thanks to mother.

Mother (June 24, 1911- August 12, 1987)

Baking an apple pie this morning I heard mother's voice, reminding me not to handle the pie dough too much.  “Your pie crust will not be tender and flaky,” her patient words came to mind as they do from time to time. 

I don’t know how she learned to cook.  She didn’t have a mother to teach her.  One afternoon, when I was a grade school student, helping her in the kitchen, I was saddened hearing mother tell me her mother was buried on her 8^th birthday.  That was in 1919.  Grandpa didn’t remarry.  And, it doesn’t seem likely her only sister, Aunt Cora, almost five years old when mother was born, taught her.  Perhaps it was the woman mother worked for as a housekeeper those years before she and daddy married.  The lady was always spoken of as a kind and caring person.  She may have taught her.

Daddy loved mother’s cooking, all the while boasting about being a good cook himself.  “I just don’t have the time.” We laughed.  He did make delicious snow ice cream.

A year or so ago, watching Paula Deen’s cooking show, reminded me of my father's unbridled taste for butter.  Mother’s yellow cake, hot from the oven, garnished with creamery butter served with a tall glass of cold milk was a favorite dessert of his. 

Many of Paula Deen’s recipes were butter rich.  Influenced by her glowing positivity, I wanted to consider diets laden with fats and sugars were not as bad for ones health as the medical community told me – even knowing heart disease killed my daddy at the young age of 58.  

When it was revealed that Paula Deen had been diagnosed earlier with diabetes, I stopped watching her.  She immediately lost her credibility with me.  (I was surprised her show wasn’t cancelled then.)

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The Food Network remains a favorite TV channel. Their programming has strengthened my cooking initiative.  I’m not as shy with the knives!

Who teaches/taught you how to cook?