Validated!

I went to eat Moroccan food with a friend this afternoon, and left the restaurant feeling extremely validated to realize that the tagine kefta I've been cooking this week was far better than what they served. Also, to not even have cous cous on the buffet is just...unacceptable. No freshly baked bread, either!

We ended up talking quite a bit about cooking, and how the food we ate growing up and the way our parents cooked effects our desires to cook, as well as our taste buds--what appeals to us. My family encouraged me to eat all different kinds of foods, but I was somewhat unadventurous until college, when, after reading Holy Cow, I decided to try Indian food. After that, I never looked back, and have only avoided foods that contain the few things I knowingly dislike. (Cilantro and celery!) The great thing about cooking is that I can pick and choose ingredients, and leave out the cilantro or jalapenos when the recipe calls for it!

Growing up, my mom was the one who could be counted on to make good, quick meals that were always tasty, never too fancy, and Just What You Wanted. She makes a lot of chili, roasted vegetables, tacos...and mixes a damn good margarita. Recently, as part of a jihad against high fructose corn syrup, she began baking her own cakes for birthdays, and made a great Italian Cream Cake, Cheesecake, and Carrot Cake...although, we both would agree, probably not quite as good as the Whole Foods Carrot Cake!

However, while I certainly inherited my mother's ability to whip up a good, wholesome meal everyone can enjoy on the go, I think that my love for cooking and interest in trying new, complicated recipes comes from my dad. He is the one who will go to a restaurant, order something complicated (or not!), and say "hmm, this tastes interesting...I wonder what's in it..." and then decide to re-create it. He worked for years to re-create the sauce from a barbeque restaurant that he and my mom enjoyed in college. His recipe is only distributed among family members, and is occasionally given out to friends as wedding gifts! The sauce is handed out every Christmas, in cute little mason jars. I've been onto him to send me a case of sauce up here in DC! He seems to enjoy baking more than anything else, and once made me and my brother and sister spend a Saturday morning picking dewberries in a field outside our house, so that he could make dewberry pie! Another one of his staples, which he makes every holiday, are pralines with orange rind, and he once spent the day trying to re-create the cream frosting that comes inside a Shipley's cream filled do-nut! That was a hoot.

While I'm not a baker, and I'm not nearly skilled enough to re-create recipes from scratch, I seem to have inherited his fearlessness in the kitchen. I gather the ingredients before I even finish reading the recipe, which I generally don't do until I'm done cooking it! This becomes problematic when I find that I'm lacking an appliance to make a certain dish, but I always seem to find a way around that! Hmm, should I add "creative problem solver" to my resume?