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I’m Obsessed with Chefs and Bakers
But I don’t like most foods
I have a confession. Nothing spicy. (See what I did there?) I love watching cooking and baking shows, reading their books, and trying their recipes. I have no idea where this interest comes from. I never watched cooking shows when I was growing up, or followed chefs. I don’t even like a lot of foods. Textures can be tough. Tomatoes or hummus make me gag. Mushrooms make me squirm. Flavors that taste good to other people, like ranch dressing, onions, and many other vegetables, taste very bitter to me. Food can smell really good to me, but taste and texture are another thing entirely.
I learned how to cook, really cook, in a nineteenth-century kitchen with real ingredients over a coal stove, taught by people who knew what they were doing.
I loved it.
I loved the chopping, the peeling, the frying, the mixing, the baking, the roasting, and the comraderie of the older ladies teaching us young chickens what to do. I learned how to stuff sausages with meat that we butchered ourselves. I learned that if you don’t add sugar to fermenting cider in a pottery container, it will explode. Plucking chickens was not pleasant, but I loved the smell of everything combining in whatever dish we made with them after. Rendering lard and making pig’s foot souse were definitely experiences. It was a lot…
