C is for Cooking at the Youngs' House

I learned to cook at home when I was a teenager. My mother worked in our store and didn’t get home till after 6:00 PM, so I needed to at least get dinner started each evening. Most evenings I cooked the whole meal. I didn’t learn from cookbooks or from watching my mother cook: I learned over the phone. Mother would give me basic instructions to begin with; then I’d call her to get specifics if I couldn’t figure everything out for myself. She’d say, “What does it look like? How does it smell? How does it taste?” Just generic questions. I managed to become a pretty good cook that way.

But when Frank and I married, I needed more instructions because he wanted things that I’d never even tried to cook: shepherd’s pie and SOS and liver and onions . . . all sorts of things that I’d never even heard of. He was a good teacher, cooking right along with me.

For 32 years, I did so much cooking while I was teaching, so when I retired from the classroom and took to the road as a sales representative for a textbook company, I was so happy to cook only on the weekends. Frank did his own cooking while I was traveling the highways and byways of Florida and later New Mexico. He ate better than I did because restaurant cooking gets old after a while. I must tell you that he spoiled me on Friday evenings, when I got home from working with teachers all week. He almost always had a delicious dinner ready for me, many times with wine and candlelight.

When we moved to New Mexico, I was afraid that I wouldn’t have any friends. Frank said that the way to make friends was to have a big birthday party for him in September each year, inviting all the new people we had met during the year. Fine with me. The first year, we had about 20 guests, and Frank and I cooked for everyone. He was 70 that year. The next year, about 50 new and old friends came. The year that he was 75, we had a birthday party family reunion combination, and we had at least 125. Our son-in-law helped us with the cooking for that party.

We almost always have a Christmas Open House, with anywhere from 75 to 100 friends and family present. And who does the cooking? We do! He makes vegetable soup, and I make gumbo. I begin a couple of weeks ahead of time baking cookies. We’ve slacked off a little bit with our big parties, but at 78 and 84, we’re not ready to quit having big parties. Frank will be 85 in September, and he has already announced that he wants a party. We’ve skipped that party for about four years, but we both think that 85 is important enough to have a Big Birthday Bash!

This photo is at one of our Christmas Open Houses. You can see the results of getting up at 5:00 to get started in the kitchen for several days. Lots of work, but very rewarding!

Cookies galore . .  .