My son's soup -

Last night, Liz and my daughter, driving back from a college visit, were due to get home about 7:30. I suggested to my son that I put a large roasting chicken on the Webber for dinner. He asked about side dishes, which I never think about and so had none planned. Before I know it, he's cutting up a winter squash, cooking it, mashing it, blending it, adding a little Pinot Noir, butter heavy cream and salt & pepper. To say the least - this is pretty unusual for this 23 year old to be doing. He brings a spoon over to me as I'm catching up on the mail and asks me to taste it - It Was Fantastic! I have no idea where he got the idea to do what he did but I hope for the future!

That's a good sign! I started to get somewhat serious about cooking in my early 20's as well.

I've always thought men do cooking so much easier than women, they don't fret as much or seem to have the need to plan ahead as much. Even with our two sons, they can cook up a storm with just a few minutes notice. They both love to tinker with sauces, blending various concoctions and never worry if it will be good or not, because it always is.

I was getting serious about cooking at that age, i.e. grad school.

I had grown up with a typical 1950's cuisine experience. Jello was supposed to be exciting.

What with sitars and meditation and all that I picked up a couple of Indian cookbooks and found enough Turmeric and whatever to set about cooking. I made very tasty puris and dhal back then. I hate to think of the set-up though, an electric hotplate on the floor of my single room. Double hotplate. The idea of deep frying puris next to my desk and bed kind of scares me in retrospect but I wasn't scared when I was doing it...

Hey, wow!

My own intro to cooking on my own occurred just after I'd graduated from college, at age 21. I was watching an episode of Joyce Chen Cooks on Educational TV (now called PBS). I loved Chinese food, and this episode on "how to grow your own bean sprouts" (bean sprouts were only generally available in the inferior canned form in 1976) appealed to me as a Biology major. Joyce Chen also offered a recipe for a simple stir-fried pork shreds with bean sprouts, which my mother copied down.

After the show, I hunted down a batch of dried mung beans from the local health food store, and a week later I had a wonderful couple of quarts of fresh Chinese bean sprouts. As I proudly presented them to my mom, she asked, "what now?" I responded, "you're going to make a Chinese bean sprout dish." To which she responded, "No--YOU'RE going to make a Chinese bean sprout dish. You're about to go off to grad school on your own. You need to know how to cook for yourself."

And so my mother helped me to shop for the lean pork, ginger, soy sauce, and vegetable oil I needed to prepare the dish. With her assistance, I made this simple stir-fried Chinese pork and bean sprouts. I was hooked. There's been no looking back, regarding a passion for cooking.

-Paul W.

Hey, wow!

To which she responded, "No--YOU'RE going to make a Chinese bean sprout dish. You're about to go off to grad school on your own. You need to know how to cook for yourself."


-Paul W.

We must have the same mother I woke my mother up one Saturday morning when I was 10 or so asking for breakfast so she got up and taught me how to cook an egg with toast and on her way back to bed said "now you don't have to ever wake me again"....and that's how I got hooked.

Drew