New Cooks in the Kitchen

This year my oldest child has finished high school and is looking at the wide world and at being on his own for the first time. I remember keenly the buying of the few pots at a thrift store that would make up my kitchen arsenal at college.  I remember the one cook book that my mother gave me before I left--at least it was full of names that I knew and trusted, having been compiled by ladies from my church.  I remember many calls home about elementary food preparations, and I remember the thrill of a recipe really working out.  I also remember Ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches between classes.

We all started out somewhere on the road to cooking first for ourselves and then for others.  Ideally that was at home under the watchful eye of mom or dad.  But whatever experience you have had in the past, the time when you are truly on your own is a little scary and exciting.  This is my offering to my young or novice friends in their kitchens.  On the main blog page, to the right hand side of the screen there is a new tab labeled: Cooking School.  If you click there, you will find all kinds of recipes already posted here that are easy for beginners, or for those who just need quick meal ideas.  For the next few posts, I will add some content to give basic instructions for this tab and some fun recipes.  For today, I leave you with this quote found at the beginning of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook:

"Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba.  It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats.  It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances.  It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies--loaf givers."--Ruskin

Jenny