YOU CAN'T STUFF UP SOUP, CAN YOU?

I don't always love food, but when I do we are a good team in a strong relationship and somehow symbiotic, even though one of us ends up eaten.  

I remember my early forays into the chemistry of food.  Yes, yes, I am from the era when "Cooking" subjects were not only mandatory for girls but they were transitioning to "Home Economics" in order to help us better understand our worth.  But really, we just cooked.  My first cooking class at Springwood High School (after the mandatory 'go out and buy all these things' class and having made an apron in 'Sewing' class), was "How to Make a Banana Sandwich".  No kidding.  

Truth be told I actually learnt something.  

Firstly, she told me to butter the bread right to the edges after spying my splodge of butter quite evenly centred on the two slices in front of me.  Having grown up in a margarine household, butter remained cold and untamed to me: any attempt at getting it to behave was met with a nasty gash in my bread.  

Patience was my second lesson: Nothing of worth was rushed.  I was taught to wait for that sweet spot when butter was at its most spreadable; or when the oven had preheated; or the required chemical reaction had occurred - which required timing and order, long before I could venture further to discover the elusive art of perfectly timed Baking.  

The last lesson of the Banana Sandwich involved the correct ingredients: Prior to my Cooking Class Guru's intervention I included sugar on the list.  When she came to check the contents of our sandwiches I thought I had done a disservice to the world of gastronomy and female intelligence by the look of complete horror on her face.  I covered the blight as quickly as possible with the perfectly-timed, room-temperature-buttered (right to the edges) slice and shoved it ever-so-indelicately into my mouth.  It was lunch time after all.

I was made to redo my sandwich, with scraps of leftovers from the perfectionists sitting either row of me.  I was told I was never to put sugar on a sandwich of 'any kind' ever again, lest I forfeit "Home Economics" altogether and would be made to repeat a grade.  I didn't believe her exaggerated threats, but having tasted the subtle yet newly sweet taste of fruit over refinery, I also found it relatively easy never to put sugar on any sandwich I ate again*...

*fairy bread being a different matter altogether 

(photo courtesy of Indulgy)

From correctly-buttered banana sandwiches to a 10 course Italian meal for 28 people with nothing but a regular household stove & oven, I have battled my wits and energy against food.  I became a vegetarian through financial choice when I left home (back in those days I think we all lived on weekly wages of something like $70 a week).  I'm no longer a vegetarian (so all you carnivores can keep reading), although I choose vegetable meals more often than those with meat of any kind.  Being a vegetarian - for whatever reason - meant really thinking about your meals, which I mostly enjoyed.  I pored over recipe books borrowed from libraries and bought at St Vinnies.  At 10am I would be thinking about dinner at 6.30pm, by midday I had the books out, reviewing each for taste, simplicity and available ingredients, by 2pm I had a recipe in mind and would need to walk across the road to the fruit and veg shop to buy all the yummy components for the Roullade or Quiche or Nut Loaf.. If anything involved pulses, well.... I'd actually have to start that meal the day before!  Yep... vegetarianism and a certain Cooking teacher whose name I can't recall, but whose lesson I never forgot taught me the fundamentals about cooking: stretching everything right to the edge, using the right ingredients* and patience.

** there are no right ingredients

Having learnt my cullinary lessons over forty years, I reckon I can cook the really good stuff now.