Nourishment

This weekend was filled with quiet house chores, incense, and cooking.
So much cooking.

While I was standing in the kitchen struggling to muddle through recipes and lack of equipment (and experience) my mind wandered. I thought about other women in my life and their seemingly effortless relationship with food and cooking.

Was this ease from natural affinity, or from early home training?

I know that I've written about my mom a lot in the past, but because she's moved I've had less to say. (You've missed my rants. Admit it.) I couldn't help but think about my mom's relationship with food and her approach to cooking. And how it colored my view of cooking.

Mom was a go-getter. Always busy. Always overbooked. Always running behind. Meals were an inconvenient obligation, but she insisted that we ate as a family a few times a week. It was a great idea that was usually executed through series of hurried microwaved dishes and we choked down the soggy, salty mess and called it dinner. Growing up I honestly thought this was food; that the angry, burning opera she performed was cooking, and I wanted no part of it.

As I aged, and she abandoned motherhood the same way she wandered away from mental stability, feeding myself became my own responsibility. Finding myself in the distasteful position of having to cook (gasp!) I muddled through with the least amount of food possible: orange juice, crackers, and sandwiches. And that was it. Maybe the occasional boxed rice, or pasta dish, if I felt like cooking.

Time went on and I'm now married with a daughter and I've taken a different approach to meals and what feeding a family is all about. I'll admit that starting from scratch as an adult is daunting and humiliating.

But I keep trying.

Like most parents, I want more for my child. I want Nora to have a better understanding of food. To have better tools. She may have no desire to cook, or clean, but I don't want her to find herself, like me, having to learn everything through Google at 30-something. She won't have to waste her time on learning stuff she should already know so that, as an adult, she could learn something more fun. A different hobby.

Mom probably wanted better for me, too. I remember her trying to get me interested in her pooping bacon and overflowing canned green beans, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. My questions (because understanding why is vital to my cooking process, even now) were met with dismissals and, "It's not hard. Your brother can do this, and he's three years younger than you." Not exactly a bonding experience.

I wonder how things will be between me and Nora. I wonder if I will inadvertently crush her inner chef? If I will intimidate her?

Or, could I actually get it right?