I always hated to cook. My mother loved her kitchen time. Mike and I were the clean-up crew. No problem.
If not for help from an elementary school friend, thank you, @BarbaraKidder, I would have failed Home Ec. in junior high. Barb sewed my Pepto pink sleeves into empire-waisted dress sockets ala Josephine Bonaparte, and she was my godsend in the cooking rotation. I still remember shiny sauce pans and shuffling in place, rocking, finding it relentlessly boring.
Rumor had it the Home Ec. teacher was found swimming naked in the pool with the industrial arts teacher.
My brother got to make the cool dog lamp.
I may look like I am in heaven, but what I was really thinking, gazing at my newborn, was,
“I am going to have to cook for eighteen years.”
I cried.
I had not given a thought to ‘cooking shit’ until that moment.
If I had to cook, I was going to cook healthy. Including a variety of “food colors” helped ease the boredom. Jesse didn’t like her food to touch either. Her healthy palate was spoiled, though, also thanks to my stepson, Manuelito. He drove through Mickie D’s for Happy Meal fries when she was 6 months old. I still remember him coming back home with her that day. She would have had to gum them, I laugh now, I breast fed her for three years. Ha-ha, I never connected nursing with my reluctance to cook.
She turned out just fine.
