Columnists
Kitchen confidential
And now for something really different. Okay, I know The Times already has a column devoted to food and deliciousness. I’m not about to challenge an expert, but like a lot of all y’all, I was born with kitchen smarts. I have learned a thing or two in my 45 years living and cooking in the County. So, why not start with my food preparation adventures. Right? I am right.
When we arrived in the County in the fall of 1972, LOML and I had been together for several years and churched for three. Food preparation wasn’t where we excelled. We were pretty good at the eating part, and as a young couple in Toronto, we worked, we went to school, we became parents and we lived in an apartment. Best of all, we lived close enough to our parents’ homes we could put on our hungry faces and drop-by to cadge a meal, once or twice a week. If we practiced our pathetic faces, when dinner was done, we were often rewarded with enough leftovers to keep us until our next meal-time invasion. The day LOML accepted a job in Picton was the day we knew one of us would have to learn how to cook. Don’t get me wrong, we could prepare food. I could make toast like the best of them and I knew my way around a can of soup. I spent the first morning of our married life trying to get an over-easy egg onto the breakfast plates. When I finally hit it right, LOML told me he preferred a broken yolk. I showed him the kitchen garbage pail with at least a half dozen broken yolk fried eggs in it. Broken yolks it was, from that point on. His specialty was toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. They weren’t great sandwiches, but they were a novelty to me. My mom rarely purchased white sliced bread, cheese slices, or processed luncheon meat. Picton was going to be an adventure, for sure.
Aside from all of the other challenges the County had to offer, cooking was the one that presented itself every, single day. Early on, I decided making an apple pie must be as easy as apple pie, and one day I made a picture perfect apple pie. I think the problem started with how much I kneaded the dough. Yup, you read that right. I figured pastry dough had to be kneaded. I had a recipe book, but only went as far as reading the ingredients list. Of course the picture perfect apple pie was knife and fork resistant. The pie was a complete waste of apples and flour. At that point, as the stayat- home parent, I decided to focus my culinary skills on main dishes. After I learned how to make Jell-o, we had dessert covered. Who can forget my attempt at cooking a whole chicken? My parents didn’t serve poultry, so Chicken a La Anything was going to be a challenge. I did learn that there was only one way to cook a bird and medium rare wasn’t the way. Who knew? Well, LOML knew but didn’t understand why I’d ask how he liked his chicken cooked. So, medium rare fried chicken it was that day, with green Jell-o for dessert.
I’ve come a long way. I learned a lot from the great cooks I’ve met here. Reading further than the ingredients list was one of the first lessons a kind “book club” friend taught me. Vanilla and soy sauce look the same but shouldn’t be used as substitutes for one another. Scones and biscuits aren’t done right if they can be used as door stops, and soup is more than a pot of water with things floating in it. As the County evolves into a food and drink destination, I think of how LOML and I have developed our culinary skills. He can heat and reheat like a pro. If there’s fire, he’s a grill master. And it was only last week our youngest daughter called and asked for my pastry recipe. Believe it or not, she cooks for a living and tells me I was her inspiration. I’ll take that as compliment.
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