All Things Transcription

Times are hard and lots of families have begun cooking at home more. Hallelujah! I was born in the South and I come from a long line of great cooks. I believe that cooking and eating with your family is one of the best things in the world. There is nothing better for me than seeing people eat the food I cook and hearing that first “mmmm” if the dish has turned out well.

I lean heavily on the Southern dishes that I grew up with. My grandmother, mother, and my aunts were all great cooks. One of my favorite memories is of our very large family reunions and the long line of tables covered with acres of good food. My Aunt Irene’s chicken and dumplings, my grandmothers’ chocolate meringue pie, my mother’s macaroni and cheese, and so many other things. Thinking about it makes me salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Follow up:

I love fried food and we Southerners will fry just about anything, even kudzu. If you have never visited this part of the country, kudzu is that vine you see covering buildings, telephone poles, and trees until they look like living sculptures. Yes, people fry it and eat it. However, I think this is purely out of self defense. This stuff can grow at the rate of a foot a day and almost nothing kills it, so you may as well do something with it. No, I have not eaten any myself, even though all I have to do is walk to the bottom of my yard and have all I want at my fingertips.

However, one cannot subsist on fried food alone. One of the biggest challenges I have faced is trying to cook in a more healthy fashion. I actually had a pretty good example for this from another aunt who was a military wife. She had to be innovative when she couldn’t get the ingredients she wanted. She taught me to make shepherd’s pie, oven fried chicken, and steamed green beans that weren’t cooked to death with “fatback.” Not that green beans cooked with fatback are not the bomb, but if you checked out the link you know it isn’t the healthiest thing in the world.

She was the first person that introduced me to the idea of cooking fresh with what you have available. She learned to make shepherd’s pie in Turkey with mutton. Mutton is something you just cannot find where I live, so I do what she did and I make it with lean ground beef. I always spent a little time with her in the kitchen when we visited, and she was always glad to share stories and show me what she was doing.

Think back and find your favorite food memory. There was someone in your family or the mother of a friend who cooked something you loved. You remember the smell and associate it with something pleasant. Maybe it was the snowy days when you were numb from head to toe, but when you came in your mom had some of that great stew she made to make you warm and comfortable. Perhaps it’s the barbeques at the lake on summer weekends where your dad grilled the best burgers you have ever had.

If you make the effort to cook at home just a few days a week, you will be creating these food memories for your family. Use your imagination and some local produce to create something memorable. Build on what you know. Take the kids to the farmers market and let them choose something they would like to try. Enlist them in the kitchen. Even the smallest child can do something useful. Results may vary, but the important thing is that the memories you are creating may inspire them to love cooking. This is a great life skill for anyone to have.

If you aren’t a cook you can learn to be. There is no need to be afraid. There are many websites that can teach you basic cooking techniques that will allow you to put a meal on the table very quickly. Home cooking is one of the best ways to get a family back in touch with each other. You won’t be sorry you tried it.