How I learned to cook...

Dad went to Cornell business school. He was a busboy at age sixteen, later going on to co-own his own restaurant. Mom was a waitress who'd worked for Dad, then married him. I guess you could say that grease runs in my blood!

As a child, I was a picky eater, and unfortunately, my poor habits were encouraged. While the parents created elaborate dinners for friends, I was usually fed spaghetti noodles with butter and salt, or hot dogs on a plate with a puddle of ketchup to dip them in, macaroni and cheese, and bologna sandwiches, then sent to bed early. They kept bologna and Twinkies in the vegetable bin of the 'fridge for me to access on my own, and I often pigged out when friends came over, just to show off the fact that I had my own food locker!

After the parents split up, Mom didn't entertain at home anymore. She started going out most nights, leaving me home alone. I knew how to make hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, those buttered noodles, heat up a can of soup, melt cheese on bread in the oven, make Shrinky Dinks while the oven was still hot, and hard-boil eggs. Basically, I didn't know much, but I could feed myself. For years, there'd been an intriguing array of bottled spices in a cabinet over the refrigerator, but I'd never seen them used. Mom made really good biscuits once in a while, fried up eggs, tried to create home-made soups and stews, and every few weeks we'd enjoy a Yankee Pot Roast, but I'd never sampled the amazing dishes she used to slave over, presenting crown roasts with little paper chef's hats on the ends of the exposed bones, roast leg of lamb with fresh mint sauce, whole roast goose. My situation had become so bad that when introduced to new foods at the homes of friends or in restaurants, I'd refuse to eat what I could not recognize.

No wonder I actually went through scurvy in my early teens! I subsisted on a diet of mainly white bread, white rice, lots of butter, soda, and processed meats. Though I actually enjoyed exercise and sometimes worked out up to three hours at a go, I was disgustingly overweight, once more than sixty pounds over the ideal weight for my age, height and build!

I was also a couch potato. I know that seems contradictory, but I liked to work out to extra-loud rock music, so I would only exercise when I was home alone. So long as anyone who might complain about the noise was around, I generally just crashed on the couch or floor and stared at TV all day. Sometimes, when you can't find any cartoons or half-decent movies or even black and white reruns of old sitcoms, the only entertaining things left are Canadian cattle auction, golf, and cooking shows.

I couldn't figure out why the stuff I saw on the cooking shows looked so easy, and came in such vast variety, yet we always seemed to eat the same old boring stuff day after day at home. Mom rolled her eyes and laughed when I mentioned it. Apparently cooking was a chore to her. She even eventually stopped bothering making special meals for holidays or birthdays, citing it was simply too much work. It just didn't look like much work on TV...

I found a set of cookbooks under the pile of 8-tracks in a cabinet in the china closet. If we didn't have or I didn't like a particular ingredient, I'd omit or substitute. I climbed up onto a chair and started looking through those old bottled spices. Some of them recommended the best things they accompanied. The kitchen became my laboratory.

I got yelled at for cooking marinara at three in the morning because the smell would wake Mom up. She didn't understand why I was drying Chinese beef jerky in a cold oven, or why I needed fresh black figs all of a sudden. When I started working, I'd take a chunk of my pay and started haunting the grocery store, then later the Chinese grocery. I'd show off my successes to co-workers who'd hand me magazine articles and clipped recipes to try. I was the one who eventually revived holiday cookery, once working myself to exhaustion on a Thanksgiving feast taken from a collection of recipes dating from the 1700s, beginning the preparations a week in advance.

And it wasn't work at all. I found I loved it! It appealed to my focused, straightforward way of thinking, challenge existed in attempting to keep track of several different recipes cooking at once, I learned how to prioritize, how much work I could do in advance, how to distract hungry company with quick appetizers, how to interchange ingredients to create something better. I branched out from American family standard fare to Chinese, Polynesian, Japanese, Hungarian, Taiwanese, and Russian foods. I'd bulk up on frozen bread dough when it was on sale, then experiment mixing it with grains and herbs and sweets and glazes. I went from ordering burgers and steak and fried chicken at restaurants to trying unfamiliar things just so I could get more ideas...

Then I became friends with a professional chef known for his smoked meats and Cajun creations. He introduced me to herbed vinegars and sauteed alligator, jambalaya, ostrich on garlic toast, crawdads and fried okra. The only grill we had at home was a tiny kettle grill I'd learned to smoke bacon slabs in, but my meats usually came out over- or under-done, prompting Mom to encourage me to quit playing with the thing. My grilled specialty was a variation on Drunk Chicken. I'd grill breast halves with no marinade or seasoning, cooking them almost dry, then soak them in sherry overnight.

Because resources were limited, but imagination was not, I discovered cool cooking tricks like boiling corn on the cob with maple syrup to make it extra sweet and juicy. I found out how to make gravy from bacon, that you can substitute mayonnaise for butter in many recipes for extra richness and a faster path to a huge coronary attack, flavoring vegetables with pepperoni instead of fatback, using piquant herbs, vegetables and citrus to flavor foods instead of salt. I started buying myself a cookbook every year on my birthday and learned that brown sugar marries well with red meats, cinnamon is wonderful in small doses on pork, tea is a fantastic marinade that tenderizes meats exceptionally well and should be added to the water when steaming, coconut milk is often a lighter substitute for cow's milk in many recipes, seeds and grains are usually great additions to many meals for people who desire more fiber, fresh pumpkin is a great substitute for canned if first roasted to remove excess water and is also wonderful in soups and stews, broths are more nutritious to cook with than plain water, and V-8 is a fabulous substitute for many recipes calling for canned tomato.

As you may have noticed, my diet changed from bland and low in nutrition to an abundance of unhealthy fatty but delicious dishes, to what I mainly consume now: fresh vegetables and fruits, lean meats, whole grains, and very little dairy. It's rare for me to even drink a soda anymore. My knowledge of cooking grew into a knowledge of nutrition and how it affects health. I've learned what foods to turn to like medicines, what to limit as rare treats, and what gives me energy vs. what fills me up and keeps my immune system in check. I'm only sorry the healthy part of this knowledge has come so late. I've actually endured a number of malnutrition problems over the years that I am still attempting to correct and prevent. There is more information available than ever before on diet and nutrition and if you are the main source of home-cookin' at your place, I highly recommend you start brushing up on how to get the optimum health benefits from every dish you prepare. I'm not telling you to go on a raw-foods crash diet, but once you begin to really pay attention to how different foods affect you and the people around you, you can begin to correct bad eating habits and start to feel more attuned to your body—especially as you age.

We had Chinese tonight. I marinated sliced turkey in triple sec, minced ginger, arrowroot powder, onion powder and minced garlic. Olive oil was heated in a hand-hammered wok over the grill. I added veggies depending on how long it takes each one to cook. Fresh onion, carrots, snow peas, mushrooms, water chestnuts, broccoli, black pepper, my personal blend of five salts, paprika, curry powder, celery seed, with a sauce of pureed mandarin orange segments, fresh lime juice, honey, and soy sauce, all served over a bed of gluten-free rice noodles. This recipe doesn't exist anywhere. I made it up as I went. Turkey is my favorite lean meat, arrowroot is a good substitute for flour or cornstarch, olive oil is great for the body inside and out! The veggies provided fiber and the quick-cooking in the wok preserves most of their nutrients. Food cooked in a hand-hammered wok can contain up to four times the iron than that cooked with other appliances. Paprika adds vitamin A and color. Honey replaces sugar in most of my recipes. Stir-frying is energy efficient because the bulk of the meal preparation comes in the chopping and mincing ahead of time rather than slaving over a hot stove a half hour or more.

The Backyard Gourmet articles deal mainly with grilling because we just don't happen to own a stove. I've decided that microwaves are okay for heating or re-heating, but I prefer actual cooking whenever possible. In the winter, we often bring the crock pot in and make large meals we can leave on "warm" and eat from whenever we want to over the course of several days. Our grill happens to have a burner on the side for wok cooking and the like, and when I need more cooking space, I'll take over Emma's fire pit. My smoker is a joy to deal with and the results are always tender and savory. If I ever find a spit that fits the grill, I'll start learning to roast things that way, but I'm very pleased with the baking skills I've developed on it so far.

Curiosity brought me to the kitchen. Necessity taught me how to mix and match ingredients. Observation led me to begin learning about the impact of nutrition on health. High cost of living expenses have made me frugal, but blessed with cooking skills that allow us to eat fantastic meals on a shoestring budget. You can enjoy gourmet-quality variety in your life with very little expense or time and hardly any cooking skill if you try any of the creeations from these articles and start to tweak them to suit your own tastes and dietary needs.

Then one day you'll go poking about those rusty tins and dusty bottles of spices and condiments and a whole new world of savory delights will open up for you.

Eat healthy, eat well.
—Eddie D.