We
had company a couple of weeks ago, our daughter Chris and her family. While
they were here I fixed sloppy joes. She put a note on Facebook about that and
another daughter stated that I “made
awesome” sloppy joes. It reminded me of a comment a friend of ours made at one
time. (This friend has since moved, so don’t any of you wives wonder if it was
your husband!) He said, “My wife is not a good cook. But I know that when our
children are raised they will all say what a wonderful cook their mother was. That
is the great thing about children.”
So I don’t
get a big head when my children praise me for my cooking, because I know I’m
not a good cook, but they don’t know that! I cook plain but filling meals. With
seven children my thought as a mother was quantity. When we had four teenagers
I had to cook big harvest-size meals, and during the summer that was three
times a day.
My mother
was an excellent cook, at least her children always thought so. I have some of
her recipes and use them at times. She, too, was a basic cook. This reminds me
of another story I heard years ago:
A young girl was visiting with her grandmother. Grandma fixed dinner
and served cake for dessert. “What cake mix did you use for this cake?” the
granddaughter asked. “It is the best cake I’ve ever eaten.”
“I didn’t use a cake mix,” Grandma
answered. “I made it from scratch.”
Scratch? The granddaughter didn’t
ask what that was, but decided to find out. When Grandma went to bed that
night, granddaughter went through the kitchen cupboards to find a box of
“scratch.” She found a container with flour, one with sugar, some boxes with
things that were labeled baking powder and baking soda, but no scratch. She
checked the fridge and even the freezer. No scratch.
The next day grandma sent granddaughter
to the grocery store for some milk. While there the granddaughter looked for
scratch on all the shelves up and down the aisles. Finally she asked one of the
workers at the store if they had any scratch.
“I’ve never seen scratch, what’s it
used for?” asked the helper.
“Grandma used it to make a cake,”
granddaughter replied.” So they went to the aisle where the baking supplies
were, but no scratch.
“Why don’t you try the pharmacy
next door?” the helper said.
So granddaughter went to the
pharmacy.
“Scratch?” the pharmacist asked. “I
don’t have anything here by that name. Maybe it goes by another name. Why don’t
you try the health food store down the street?”
“Scratch? Never heard of it,” was
her answer at the health food store.
“Maybe it’s something special she
used to bake it in. There’s a store over on the next block that has baking
pans. Maybe they would know.”
No help there either. When the
granddaughter got back to grandma’s with the milk, grandma quizzed her on what
had taken her so long. Granddaughter told grandma about her search for scratch.
Grandma laughed so hard she had to sit down.
“Oh dear, I guess our generation is
really different from yours,” she said. “Scratch is a term we use when we cook
everything from basic ingredients, not from a mix. That’s the way I learned to
cook and that’s the way I prefer to cook now.”
In this day
and age I have the best of both worlds available to me
when it comes to cooking: when in a rush, I can cook from mixes and boxes, when
I have the time I can cook from scratch – and know that my children will always
think that I’m a good cook no matter what or how I cook. Life can’t get much
better than that, can it?
