We had two boys that used to watch me cook but had no interest in actually “cooking”. UNTIL they both got married and then they’d call me and ask for my meatloaf recipe or how I made mashed potatoes or how to make potato pancakes or how I made the sausage stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey or....you get the idea!
Made me feel good that they “remembered” way back to their childhoods and wanted to prepare the same meals with their own kids. Even now they do a lot of the cooking because they want the meals to taste like they “used to”!! I find it interesting because their wives are excellent cooks.
One of the only things I do remember them helping with was making a Waldorf Salad. A few times it didn’t seem like there were enough apples in the salad. Hmmmm, I wonder why? LOL!
Oh, and they both have gardens.
One of the things I like about the Betty Crocker book for kids, is that it engaged boys as well as girls. That didn’t seem weird to me back then (I was raised pretty much without the “boys do this, girls do that” stuff); but looking back, it seems kind of revolutionary for a book to have involved boys in cooking in 1957 (which was the original publication date.)
Our home-made family cookbook is FULL of recipes from my husband’s mom, despite the fact that he has become a much more experimental eater and cook since boyhood. Nobody ever cooks like ‘Mom’; and people want what they are used to and remember as satisfying!
-JT
Reminds me of our cat... That thing haunts me in the kitchen. Watching, staring, scrutinizing... Thank goodness it lacks thumbs. If cats had any measurable intellect not rooted in simple chicanery it would be a master chef by now.