May I present my OJT credentials? I can remember cooking/butchering easy-over eggs in our pre-1959 kitchen on Fellowship Street, which meant I was not yet seven. That I was allowed access to the stove and cooking utensils is a bit surprising, but I suppose Mama’s logic was that if I could cook my own eggs, then she didn’t have to.
I was Mama’s chief go-to for baking all through grade school for whatever was needed, from cookies to cakes. Just as importantly, I was the family popcorn-popper all of my young life, for the simple reason that I never burned it.
I used to be Papa’s sous chef, though we didn’t use that term in those days. I was his helper. I peeled and cut up the potatoes [almost] daily, diced onions, peppers, celery, garlic and whatever else needed prepping and, of course, I was one of the pot wallopers after dinner was over.
During summer with parental permission, I was allowed to cook over an open fire in the back yard, right next to the lemon tree faucet (for obvious reasons). I fried hot dogs and fresh potatoes. Bravely-even heroically-I choked down those tates, wondering as I did so, how they could be both burned on the outside and raw on the inside. It defied logic but I ate them anyway. And then “cooked” them again the next morning, grimly refusing to share lest anyone find out the truth.
Sage, rosemary & thyme
While in the army, I cooked on the oil-burning stoves in the hootch in Korea, at least during the long, frigid winter. You would be amazed at the concoctions I created, using Korean Ramen before Ramen was even introduced “back in the world.”
We took turns on War Admiral Avenue, in San Jose, cooking for any and all of the six inhabitants of the house when it was our turn. It was a corner lot and we had crammed an amazing garden in the backyard, and canned a stack of tomatoes for using all winter. We were vegetarians for the most part during that fifteen-month period, because we were too poor to afford meat.
I was pretty much a meat/potatoes kind of guy, when Annie opened my eyes-and-stomach-to an entirely new universe of culinary diversity. The wealth of knowledge she possessed was unlimited even before the internet. I absorbed cooking skills from her for almost forty years and nothing I do is devoid of her lessons and techniques.
Meat & potatoes means
shepherd's pie now.
Besides barbecuing, which I have done since the boys were small, a specialty of mine was breakfast featuring hash browns and chili omelet. And if you are interested in other "gourmet cuisine," I have been cooking chicken cacciatore since back in the seventies. Even Annie would not cook it because she said she could not top mine. Coming from her it was high praise.
Like most cooks my training has been on-the-job, with Annie around for consultation purposes, and my own taste buds being my best/worst critic. So when Casey asked me last April if I wanted to cook lunch on weekdays for the HappyDayFarms staff, I was stoked. He’s been eating my cooking all his life and is still here to tell about it, so I figured he must be OK with it.
I had already determined that I was not going to be able to work in the orchard with tomato plants, as I had for the previous five years. The reason was a defective left [dominant] shoulder, which refused to get better because I would/could not stop using it. Unfortunately, I knew I was not going to be pitch-forking those eight rows of tomatoes out there in the orchard, not with an injured shoulder.
Summer 2019 I grew 300 tomato plants.
Pitch-forking mashed potatoes, however, was another matter entirely.
Next: Cooking for the HappyDayFarms staff
I have always enjoyed your cooking, Mark! You are an excellent chef!
ReplyDeleteAw, thanks! I should have included Jeffery Street in my ramblings. I also remember barbecuing at Larchmont, with you!
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