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Best Cook in Your Family


weinoo

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Best at feeding the family by making something from very little? Best at making consistently good meals on a daily basis? Best at laying out a gourmet spread? Best because they get in there and do it when someone else in the house, who may be a better cook, doesn't? I mean, I could cook circles around anyone in my family in a restaurant kitchen and in the home kitchen too from a technical standpoint but I don't feel like that means I'm "better". If you'd asked me this same question 15 years ago, I probably would have answered it with a simple "me". But I've learned a lot about cooking since then and I better appreciate things about the cooking others did all along that I kinda took for granted and never really thought about in terms of whether or not they were good cooks.

Apologies for the non-answer. :biggrin:

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It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

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Me.But by default...no competition really. Parents/aunts cooked 1950s overdone meat and limp veg well into the 80s. Lots of canned/frozen food. They liked it fine, I never did. I grew up in a loving family with yucky food.

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In our home I do believe I am the better cook but just barely. However, my wife bakes circles around me.

Me.But by default...no competition really. Parents/aunts cooked 1950s overdone meat and limp veg well into the 80s. Lots of canned/frozen food. They liked it fine, I never did. I grew up in a loving family with yucky food.

My mother, a bride during the depression, did things to vegetables that I considered a crime. I am supremely confident that broccoli is not supposed to be gray. Her baking skills is where she shined. What I would give to sit down and have a helping of her peach cobbler using the peaches she had canned off of our tree...

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Porthos Potwatcher
The Once and Future Cook

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My grandmother (father side) for sure. She was a great cook who could adapt to anything. She's the one who taught me how to wrap wontons and some basic dishes when I was little. I also went food shopping with her most of the time, so I know how to pick my veges and such.

Other than my grandmother, I'm the best cook in the family. No one else really cares about cooking. Even though my mother's family was in the restaurant business, they were more in the management side of things than the cooking side. Because I grew up with my grandmother and was very close to her, I picked up her love of cooking.

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My father's mother was a suberb cook; she taught my mother and then me. Dinner was every Sunday at her house and there were a dozen of us around the table. There's a picture somewhere in the family albums of me in a high chair rolling meatballs in her kitchen. She didn't bake frequently, though; when she did it was biscotti (my Nonno's favorite) and S cookies and like everything else - done in mass quantities so it would last for a month. Ravioli were every few weeks, hundreds and hundreds of them that would take the entire day in my parent's kitchen (It was just a little bigger than hers) and more than once I was found asleep in the hallway where I had snuck out of bed so I could watch my parents and grandparents at work.

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Me, for overall. But... My mom made the best pies and biscuits in the world, as well as wild berry jams, crab apple jelly and roast pork with gravy. And clam chowder. And fried chicken with gravy. Her mother was an ace cake baker and waffle maker. My other grandmother canned like the wind, made exotic jell-o molds that are still legendary -- if weird -- and introduced me to homemade raspberry shrub and Nanaimo bars. Both my parents shared a love of freshly picked/harvested/caught food and introduced us to some pretty exotic stuff for their time and place.

I really don't think my mom's wild blackberry or huckleberry pies have ever been -- nor will ever be -- equaled. Perfect pastry with perfect fillings. And who would have the wherewithal to find and pick all those tiny wild berries (the blackberries surrounded by vicious thorns) to fill a pie, except my father who knew what my mom could do with them? Sigh.

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Me, by a long shot, but I think it's mostly a generational thing. My parents and grandparents came of age in a time when food tastes were much simpler. If one had aspirations, the big thing was baking (i.e., sweets). At which my mother was, in fact, very good. (Still is, but doesn't do it much any more.)

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My grandmother Sugar, on my father's side, was a legendary southern cook. She was a Harvey Girl back in the old days, and she married a conductor on the K&T railroad. When he died, she was left a young widow with three little kids to support, and she opened a "home cooking" style restaurant. She met her second husband when he was out with his hunting buddies and bagged a raccoon that he brought into her restaurant. He asked her, "Can you cook this?" and she said, "I can cook any damn thing you can drag in here."

That comprised their brief courtship. And they were married for thirty years.

My father is the second-best cook in our family. He learnt to cook in Sugar's restaurant and later in her home kitchen.

My mother couldn't cook at all. And didn't really need to. Not only was my dad a superb cook, his job took him throughout the world. So he was always whipping up some new tasty something, often with ingredients that he had brought back from foreign lands.

As for this current generation, I am the best cook. Hands down.

Nobody else is even in the running.

At least that's what I'm often told.

And I've been given no reason whatsoever to doubt it.

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I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

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When I first responded to this thread I was thinking of those still with us. My mother-in-law was an incredible cook. From everyday family meals to knock-your-socks-off Thanksgiving feasts for sometimes 30+ people to organizing and leading the meal for 130-150 people at her sorority wine-tasting fund-raisers she was superb. And she was a wonderful human being. I miss her terribly.

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Porthos Potwatcher
The Once and Future Cook

;

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When I first responded to this thread I was thinking of those still with us. My mother-in-law was an incredible cook. From everyday family meals to knock-your-socks-off Thanksgiving feasts for sometimes 30+ people to organizing and leading the meal for 130-150 people at her sorority wine-tasting fund-raisers she was superb. And she was a wonderful human being. I miss her terribly.

Well, my daddy's still alive and still cooking (at 92), so I had to mention him. And then I wanted to 'splain where he got it.

My grandmother may be a few years' gone, but her spirit is still sure here.

I can't mention the "best cooks in the family" without saying that it all started with her.

Edited by Jaymes (log)
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I don't understand why rappers have to hunch over while they stomp around the stage hollering.  It hurts my back to watch them. On the other hand, I've been thinking that perhaps I should start a rap group here at the Old Folks' Home.  Most of us already walk like that.

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While at Disneyland today my DW made a point of picking up a peach cobbler dessert in response to my remembering my mom's peach cobbler up-thread. It was good, and I appreciated it, but it could never replace mom's.

Porthos Potwatcher
The Once and Future Cook

;

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It took me a few days to think about it, and t here's still no doubt that I'm the "best cook" in the family, in this generation and in plenty of generations past.

There might be a dish or two (my maternal grandmother's latkes and chicken fricassee I happen to remember being pretty good), but overall we're not even talking in the same ballpark. My mom probably could've been a decent cook, but much of her life was spent with various ailments (back injury, etc.) so she didn't spend a hell of a lot of time in the kitchen. And my father once told me (perhaps some 20 years ago) that my brisket was the best he'd ever had, so...

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

Tasty Travails - My Blog

My eGullet FoodBog - A Tale of Two Boroughs

Was it you baby...or just a Brilliant Disguise?

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The best cook in my family was my grandmother "Mama" Salha Bobo

She was an amazing women and cook

I like to think I got some of my love of food and cooking from her.

I tried to link her wiki page but it didn't link correctly on this site

Edited by scubadoo97 (log)
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Me, for most stuff that isn't baked goods. My husband makes fantastic bread. My SIL's (husband's side) pies and cakes are supreme. My parents were very limited: my dad made great chopped chicken liver and lox scramble, but nothing else. My mother was pretty hopeless, although she did teach me to spread bone marrow on rye bread. I have no idea where she got the bone marrow, but she must have cooked something. She did make a variety of things no one could even eat but I do give her credit for some likes and dislikes that made a lasting impression: Manhattan clam chowder and HoJo's peppermint ice cream for dessert. My grandmother is remembered (by me only) for her gribenes; if she had any other cooking skills they died with her when I was young. I taught myself to cook during a very strange period during my twenties when I spent a fair amount of time alone.

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The best cook in my family was my grandmother "Mama" Salha Bobo She was an amazing women and cook I like to think I got some of my love of food and cooking from her. I tried to link her wiki page but it didn't link correctly on this site

Wow, that's fantastic! I want to look for her cookbook. Thanks for sharing.

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The best cook in my family was my grandmother "Mama" Salha Bobo She was an amazing women and cook I like to think I got some of my love of food and cooking from her. I tried to link her wiki page but it didn't link correctly on this site

Wow, that's fantastic! I want to look for her cookbook. Thanks for sharing.

The cookbook was made for and distributed to the family.

We got a few extra for our kids and future grandchildren

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The best cook in my family was my grandmother "Mama" Salha Bobo She was an amazing women and cook I like to think I got some of my love of food and cooking from her. I tried to link her wiki page but it didn't link correctly on this site

This one? "Mama" Salha Bobo.

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Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

Tasty Travails - My Blog

My eGullet FoodBog - A Tale of Two Boroughs

Was it you baby...or just a Brilliant Disguise?

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The best cook in my family was my grandmother "Mama" Salha Bobo She was an amazing women and cook I like to think I got some of my love of food and cooking from her. I tried to link her wiki page but it didn't link correctly on this site

Wow, that's fantastic! I want to look for her cookbook. Thanks for sharing.

The cookbook was made for and distributed to the family.

We got a few extra for our kids and future grandchildren

Dang! No chance of a limited reprint? :)

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The best cook in my family was my grandmother "Mama" Salha Bobo She was an amazing women and cook I like to think I got some of my love of food and cooking from her. I tried to link her wiki page but it didn't link correctly on this site

Wow, that's fantastic! I want to look for her cookbook. Thanks for sharing.

The cookbook was made for and distributed to the family.

We got a few extra for our kids and future grandchildren

Dang! No chance of a limited reprint? :)

Thanks for the assist Mitch.

Sorry Sylvia. The last reprint was awhile back to accommodate the growing family. Not sure if another one is planned

I found some of her recipes listed in this "web archival snapshot": http://archive.is/dIQT3

Edited by Toliver (log)
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