Tap, tap, tap…is this thing on? Oh…it is? Yikes!

Welcome to the first installment of Christine’s Sunday Lunch. I will start by telling you a little bit about myself.

I grew up in a world of bad food. My mother was the world’s worst cook. We didn’t have much money, so the rule always was to clean your plate, or starve. If I didn’t want to eat the nasty, lumpy oatmeal that was often served for breakfast, which was never cooked right, nor had enough milk or sugar to make it palatable, it showed up on the table for lunch. If I didn’t want to eat it for lunch, there is was, for dinner. And so on. So, I soon learned to just eat it when it was first served, no matter how awful it was. And yes, it was pretty bad. It sort of traumatized me for life. I still won’t eat oatmeal for breakfast, to this day. My husband loves it, though, so he sometimes cooks it for himself. He eats it, I don’t. And I also use oats as an ingredient in other dishes…for instance, it makes a great substitute for bread crumbs in meat loaf or meat balls. And I do love oatmeal-raisin cookies! But when it comes to sitting in front of a bowl of hot oatmeal mush, I just can’t do it. Maybe someday, I’ll try it, cooked right. But not today.
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Pretty much all of the stuff my mother cooked was bad. I was so sure that I was going to die from eating this stuff. But I’m still here to tell the tale!

As a young adult, living on my own, I enjoyed eating out, but couldn’t afford to do it as often as I would have liked. I was working in a bookstore at the time, where I got a 40% employee discount. I started looking at the cookbooks at the store, and bought some of the ones that were big best-sellers at the time. My very first one was “Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook”, and shortly after that, I purchased “The Silver Palate Cookbook” by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins. And that was the beginning of my culinary journey…from these and other books, I pretty much taught myself how to cook, and cook well. I learned of a while new world of food, that was more than the lumpy oatmeal, Spam luncheon meat, and canned vegetables that were the usual fare when I was a kid. Spam is another thing that traumatized me for life…as an adult, not one single can of Spam has ever crossed my threshhold. No doubt that whoever started using that term for junk e-mail felt the same way. Maybe we were separated at birth!

My earliest culinary efforts were not without fault, though. One of my early faux pas was when I cooked a Silver Palate recipe called “Creamy Pasta Sauce With Fresh Herbs”. It called for one cup of assorted FRESH herbs. I could not find fresh herbs at the store, so I bought jars of dried ones, and used a cup of DRIED herbs.

The dish was inedible. What I did not know was that: 1. Dried herbs are MUCH more intense than fresh, and 2. Dried and fresh herbs both have their uses, and are NOT always interchangeable. I did make the dish again later, with the proper fresh herbs, and it was delicious. But the point is, one should learn from one’s mistakes…right?
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In the mid 1990’s, I decided to go to culinary school and try to make a career out of cooking. I went to Newbury College, which is near Boston, MA. I loved school, and got a lot out of it…but hated working at the cooking jobs afterwards. I hated the pressure, and having to cook what other people told me to. I didn’t expect to be Emeril Lagasse in my first jobs, but I didn’t think it would be as awful as it turned out to be.

One good thing I got out of my culinary career was meeting my husband. I was working at this brewpub in Cambridge, MA, and he was a regular customer…and was a student at nearby MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) at the time. I was coming off my shift, and was having my (free) beers at the bar, when my friend, one of the servers, noticed this guy eyeballing me from the other end of the bar. My friend kept saying that I should go over and talk to him, after he sent a beer my way. But I said, no…if he wants to meet me badly enough, he can come over here to talk to me. And eventually, he did! It just took him a while (and a few pints of Charles River Porter) to get up the nerve to do it.

We’ve been together for over ten years now, and married for almost seven of those. Seven-year itch day is July 22. We still like to joke that I actually cooked for Mike before I even met him…which is true, since he ate at the brewpub many, many times before I finally met him!
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But now, I am happily retired from professional cooking. I like it much better the way it is now…cooking at home, going out to eat at least once a week, and blogging about food and cooking sometimes. I love to watch TV cooking shows, and I own well over 500 cookbooks.

So, that’s enough about me! I would love for you to leave a comment about what sort of things you want to see here for future Sunday Lunches. What I have in mind are things like talking about my favorite cookbooks and kitchen toys, as well as sharing favorite recipes. And maybe more stories like the one I just told here. But I am open to suggestions!

I’ll steal the late, great Julia Child’s closing line here, and say, “Bon Appetit!”