Sunday, February 13, 2011

I Am a Food Snob

I have pretty high standards for the food I am willing to eat.  I am not picky per se as I like almost all food, though it has to be lactose free these days. But it has to be worth eating.  Before we had dietary issues we always ate a wide variety of foods and fast food was not on the menu except for the occasional  pizza and some take out Chinese.  The only time either child ate fast food like Mc Donald's it had to do with some team sports activity.  Certainly it didn't come into our home.  I cook from scratch and was a really good baker in the pre gluten free days.  Like many families, birthday meals were chosen by the one whose birthday it was.  That included desert of course made by me.  Josh and Seth generally chose chocolate pecan pie and Alex's favorite was cheese cake.  Before lactose intolerance of course. Josh, my older child is an excellent cook.

It amuses me no end, that Alex who while she knew how to cook was not willing to cook for herself.  She'd occasionally have friends to dinner her senior year and she'd cook, but knowing that she wouldn't feed herself we insisted she take the meal plan at least during the week even though she had a kitchen.  In Korea she ate out or had take out most nights.  Food was cheap so why cook?  Now that she's engaged and living in Austin where eating out costs much more than it did in Korea she is cooking.  Her cousin Simon sent her two cookbooks and after consulting her older brother she asked for The Joy of Cooking which we sent  her.  She also calls her food consultant, namely her mother.  Having grown up with food being cooked from scratch and of a pretty high order, she finds that she has much higher standards for food than her fiance.  It was his birthday this week and what did he want for desert?  Cherry pie.  So Alex made him a cherry pie.  He said oh just buy ready made crust. Alex said, of course not I'll make it.  Of course the ready made stuff is probably not lactose free. She used canned cherries in juice, fine it's not cherry season after all.  He said you mean you didn't just buy canned filling?  Incredulous, she said of course not! That's the easy part of a pie after all. He was impressed.  She only made a few phone calls to her food consultant.  She sent me a picture of the finished pie and it looked lovely.  Hopefully it tasted just as good.  For a child who liked to eat but never wanted to cook she has  embraced cooking  good  food as worth the effort.  Eating well is healthy and affordable and even fun.

6 comments:

  1. I'm a "make food from scratch" type of cook. Particulary now that I don't eat wheat (fructose intolerant). Always taste better from scratch and really doesn't take much longer. But then again, I don't make many deserts or cakes :)

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  2. I'm a scratcher, too. I have a huge pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove right now, as a matter of fact. It's satisfying to include food preparation as a part of a slow-ish way of living.

    Austin has some really, really great cafes and restaurants though. Tell her to try Threadgoode's. And Maria's Taco Express on South Lamar. And Kerby Lane, of course, and Mother's. Oh Austin... Tell her to try oats-cream, too. I never saw it anywhere outside of Austin. And Trudy's for Tex-Mex, and Spiderhaus used to have good vegan food... None of it's terrifically expensive.

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  3. My daughter cooks too - she says bought food is just not as good as homemade. As the twig is bent, right?

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  4. We say "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". It's wonderful to see that your daughter now does the same sort of cooking you do.
    Silly story: my daughter is used to a "cooking from scratch" mum as well and when she was about 12 she had a friend over and they wanted to make pancakes.The friend was hugely surprised you could make the batter yourself with flour, eggs and milk. She was only knew ready made batter in a can. My daughter was surprised the other way round: that you would buy something that you can so easily make yourself.

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  5. Awww! You did pass on your love of high quality, homemade food to your children. The other reason I don't mind cooking now is that my fiance does the dishes! ;)

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  6. My partner used to be a bit like your Daughter's partner. I'd make something and he'd say "Oh, did you buy a kit?" Then he'd be stunned that I'd actually made it from scratch. He then moved on to "where did you get this recipe?" and was stunned that I made it up on the fly because I knew we had to use x before it went off. Now he thinks his throat is cut if he has the same meal more than once in a fortnight, thinks I must be really stressed if has less than three choices for dinner and the look I get when I suggest toasted sandwiches for dinner (twice in the last year) - I think he thinks I've been inhabited by a body snatcher, absolutely incredulous and highly concerned.

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