I love to prepare food and cook it. I find it satisfying to do the knifework, plan the timing, handle the food, and then eat it (and preparing food and eating it are two different pleasures). I don't know exactly when that started, but I remember being in the kitchen as a young teenager. Mom listened to Broadway musicals and that probably lured me in to start. But I've always enjoyed good food.
So when I asked "can I help?" I got a few minor jobs. Peel potatoes and carrots. Mash the potatoes. Watch the timer. Eventually, I got to actually cut some veggies. I got better at stuff.
It's not like I liked it better than a lot of other activities (golfing, bowling, building simple wood stuff, HO trains, Marvel comic books, reading sci-fi), but it was one. And both Mom and I enjoyed classical and Broadway music.
I had always been the primary dish-washer (being eldest child) and baby-sat the younger siblings (being eldest child). But one of the pleasures of baby-sitting was that I was also trusted to make a simple dinner at 12 (Chung King Chicken Chow Mein in the old double cans was my favorite, being easy to manage).
I was a Boy Scout. And I had this idea that a guy should be able to do anything it took to get by day-to-day. I would have taken Home Economics in school, but that was reserved for girls (guys took wood-working shop) back then (mid 60s).
I came across a funny phrase back then; "If you like bacon, you have to get down in the mud and keep the hogs happy". Meaning, if you want something, you have to be able to do it yourself. I liked good food.
I've probably mentioned this before (you blog long enough and you can repeat yourself) but Mom was a very average cook and seldom met a vegetable that couldn't be boiled for too long. When I discovered stir-frying and steaming later it really opened my eyes to food.
In college, I earned money and/or free meals by cooking sweet&sour pork for other guy's cheap dates in the dorm rec room.
There's a slight story behind that. Male dorms never had stovetops in the rec rooms. Female dorms did. In 1969, the Univ of MD arranged for a coed dorm by application and approval. I was approved. WOW, there was a stovetop (and a bathtub in the shower room BTW).
Well, I had nothing to cook WITH, so I took a job selling cookware. Great stuff. Stainless steel inside and out with a layer of copper in between for heat diffusion. But if you sold one set, you got to keep the sales kit. I sold one set and quit and had a full set of cookware that was worth a year's tuition!
So I was able to cook meals at the new coed dorm. I told the other guys in the dorm that I could cook sweet&sour pork. The cost was either $5 above ingredient cost or I would buy enough to feed "them and a date and me too. I had dropped out of the dining hall expense and bought a mini-fridge (good for beer and cheap steaks). Fed myself better than the dining hall did, and cheaper too.
A business major on my floor of the dorm arranged to sell cheesesteak subs for 2 hours each night for his major. I cooked a LOT of those. He offerred better than minimum wage and 1 free sub each night. So, I love to cook.
Anyway, here was dinner last night. Cubed smoked pork with smothered onions, broccoli, bicolor corn-on-the-cob, and a nice tossed salad. With zinfandel wine and leftover cocktail. I love variety in a meal.
