Then one day last week, when I was tired of sorting through 16 boxes of memorabilia and supplies, I thought that I could make it less of a drudgery if I put in a movie and moved my work onto the rug in the living room so I could watch while I worked. Because I had been thinking of food, I stuck in the DVD, Julie and Julia, knowing that because DJ disliked the movie the first time we saw it, he wouldn't mind if I watched it again without him. I relate to both Julie and Julia for multiple reasons (so I like the movie), and I may blog on that at a later date; but the several times I have seen that movie, I have come away from watching it, wanting to cook. I mean I want to learn to really cook.
I was even tempted the first time I watched to order Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I have a good friend that did exactly that. Then after packing boxes, yes, multiple boxes, of cookbooks for storage and for Switzerland, that don't get used enough to justify the expense or the space, I thought twice (though I started to waver again the other day).
A few days later, DJ had crashed on the couch (he is getting up at 3:30 or 4:00, thus going to bed at 8:00 or 8:30). I didn't really want to go to bed without him and wasn't really sleepy so I stuck in another DVD, No Reservations. I watched as Catherine Zeta-Jones played Kate, a highly-acclaimed and accomplished chef who is obsessed with food and its preparation. The movie has several other themes, but this time through I was focused on the food. It made me want to learn to cook even more.
Wanting to be a really good cook is not a new thing for me. Take a walk with me back in my history. During our engagement, in between typing papers for DJ on the weekends that we would go to Malad, I remember typing recipe cards full of the things he enjoyed most from his mom's collection. I had made sure that I had my favorite recipes from my BYU rommates---Deb's goulash, Denise's cheesecake, Dot's mom's sugar cookies. I had my very own copy of the red and white-checked Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I had every intention of becoming a wonderful cook. After all, I had won blue ribbons at the county fair, why couldn't I become a great cook? I even have pictures (slides) of me in our basement apartment in Burley, Idaho, tediously laboring over my first pie the first summer we were married.
I had high hopes. I was hoping that becoming a fantastic cook was genetic. Mom was a good cook though she didn't have hours and hours to spend in the kitchen. She was singing at 2-3 funerals a week, doing the artwork for lots of civic and church functions, doing the bookkeeping for several of dad's business ventures, holding down several Church callings, keeping up with my intensely busy father, and taking care of lots of children and my grandpa Sowards.
Though I never got to know Grandma Farley, my mom's mother, very well, she was supposedly a wonderful cook of every delectable Southern thing---a lot of fried food. Another Southerner, turned Westerner, my great-grandmother, Jane Sowards, was known as a good cook and for sharing her bounties with others.
These words were used to describe my grandma, Ida Rebecca Sowards, in an article in the Relief Society Magazine in 1964: "Sharing her substance was part of living...Many came to her door. Friend and stranger alike surrounded her table, partook of its goodness, and departed warmed and heartened... Her jars of home-canned fruit, iridescent jewels imprisoned in glass, were a work of art...and bright palettes of artistically arranged raw vegetables were found on her table long before it was fashionable."
Grandma's eldest daughter, my Aunt Hazel, was featured more than once in full page spreads in the Food Sections of the Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune. I have copies tucked away in storage, but upon looking online this morning in the archives of The Deseret News, I found one of the articles. (Sarah sent me a scan of the picture from the article which is now in Aunt Hazel's cookbook since the picture wasn't online---not the best copy, but you get the idea.)
"If you could capture the colors of the rainbow, the vibrant presentation of the color spectrum, you'd know it was spring all around.
And then you'd begin to understand Hazel Cannon. Color Cannon creative, yet conventional.
Color Cannon insightful, yet unsettled.
Color Cannon energetic, yet relaxed.
Examining the palette of Cannon's life is a study with unlimited boundaries.
And nothing more clearly defines the dimensions of Hazel Cannon than her kitchen creations.
Kitchen duty was assigned early to her as a Vernal-born youngster. "My mother was always cooking," Cannon recalled, "friend or stranger didn't matter. Everyone was welcome to eat at our home. Sharing our substance was part of our lives; people left our home with warmth and a good feeling."
Cannon's feelings about food were influenced further by her mother's example. "Mother worried a lot about nutrition, long before nutrition concerns were fashionable. I remember her cautioning me not to overcook vegetables. `It robs them of their palatability and their vitamins.' Food presentation, in an artistic sense, was very much a part of mother's kitchen. She always worked to make the food look as good as it tasted."
Aunt Hazel's posterity recently published an entire cookbook filled with her recipes. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn't "sit at her feet" and learn while we lived in Salt Lake and Bountiful.
Well....I found out that becoming a good cook isn't genetic; but just like everything else, it takes a lot of time, hard work, and persistence. I'm not afraid of the hard work, though I hate the clean-up. Most of the time,I think my days were filled to the brim with so many other things that I didn't leave enough time to really get creative and learn things that were difficult. I definitely was not persistant. If my pie crusts weren't flakey, and my rolls weren't light, I would give up.
I did have my moments. When we lived in Vernal, my good friend, Ellen, taught me how to make my own cherry pie filling and freeze it. I became pretty proficient at homemade ice cream in Bountiful. The kids at Ottawa's McKinley Elementary loved my frosted sugar cookies (Dot's mom's recipe). I worked for six months doing tasting tables when we lived in Sugar Land and came up with some yummy things, thanks to the influence of Connie Foss. I can do a "mean" seven-layer dip (a later recipe obtained from Denise) which has been a favorite at neighborhood and family gatherings in Spring, and I've got Olive Garden's Fagioli (soup) down. BUT....at the same time, I have not learned to do many new or hard, labor-intensive things; have not served delicious, creative dinners on a regular basis; have not gotten out of my comfort zone; and have not become a really good cook. I HAVE relied heavily on Taco Bell and Wendy's dollar meals; utilized Stouffer's frozen lasagne to the point I don't even like the regular stuff any more; and could make more 20-minute meals with a pound of hamburger than I'd care to remember.
So what's the point of this blog???? I know that I have too many other things that I want to get done while I'm here in Basel to say that I'm going to become a gourmet cook. On the other hand, here's hoping that I can be a little more daring and confident and try some new things----enough so that when I move back to the states in 2013, or 14, or 15 that I will have developed some new abilities and will be able to share with friends and family. After all that's what it's all about---sitting around the table in a warm, comfortable environment, enjoying wonderful foods that look as good as they taste, while we learn and grow and love the ones were with. Besides, you should have tasted this layered chocolate dessert/cake that somebody fixed for a "linger longer" Sunday after church. I've just got to have the recipe and learn to make it. It was so rich and chocolatey; it almost melted in your mouth (and yes, DJ and I split a slice). It was..."out of this world". Bon appetit!
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