01 April 2016

A is for Advice

Advice is the word for day 1 of the #AtoZChallenge.  Why, oh, why did my manner of picking the words randomly from an on-line dictionary have to be this word?  And why, oh, why, did I have to decide to pick this year of all years to categorize my posts on this blog?  Because now, I have to write advice on cooking and or food, my topic for the whole month.

Me, who doesn’t know all that much about it, well, not enough to give any advice.  So, methinks, perhaps, I’ll start with the advice I was given when I learned to cook.  I’m sure many of you already know of the burnt pancake incident in which my love of reading sorely tried Father’s patience as he dearly loves golden brown pancakes slathered with butter and maple syrup, the real kind.  And I’m sure I’ve related my other attempts at learning to cook at some point or other. These attempts were a source of much amusement in my family, particularly my sister, who is on the rung below me and is a very competitive woman.  And my other sister, who clamors for the Mock Crown Roast I made one year and now cannot find the recipe. And my sons insistence on being fed fry bread every now and then.

Yeppers, I received a lot of advice on cooking whilst I was growing up.  Even attended a Home Economics class in which I was to learn how to run a household.  However, the Cooking portion of this class required such things as measuring cups, measuring spoons, double boilers, strainers and other such paraphernalia that didn’t abound in my home.  Some few of these were there to be sure.  The first blue house had an all purpose kitchen for the storage of the required implements along with the very necessary food which we were expected to cook, and we were to eat in this room?  And since we, kids, also had very different ideas of where these things went when the chore, “Put Away Dishes,” was assigned, it was difficult to find everything one needed.

Mayhap, it’s best if I could remember some advice from later years.  However, I think I finally used the trial and error method of learning to cook those fancy dishes.  And it was years before I figured out that one could cook macaroni and cheese from a recipe, that it tastes way better than the ones from a box.

And those recipes in that class required some ingredients from the store, most of which we couldn’t afford seeing’s how there’s usually eight of us who had to eat.  I was amazed when I actually had to purchase food for my first apartment.  The variety was so amazing since I was living in a big city.  Weell, to me, it was big-100,000 people.  So of course there were more stores, more food, more everything.  To a rez girl, it was mind boggling, as there was More Advice.