My wife, Lorena is a great cook. She is very dedicated to making good meals. She makes great salsa to go with her tacos, burritos, and all the other staple Mexican foods. She loves to make Mediterranean salads with extra virgin olive oil, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, etc. She makes some great pasta salads, too, but we have backed off on that a lot since I have been on a weight loss kick. She loves to grill beef, fish, pork, shish kabobs and Portobello mushrooms. She almost always puts throws some whole onions on the grill with whatever she is cooking.
The kids like to cook, too. It is funny that they really have not cooked so much with Lorena as they have learned on their own by experimenting, using cookbooks, and by working with some of our relatives, particularly Grandpa Milo and Aunt Julia. There were a good number of sessions that included the cooking of pizza, pork loin roasts, salads, chicken ala King, and a variety of other items. In fact, that is still one of the main things Grandpa Milo does with the kids when he visits us or when they visit him.
Quite awhile ago, I think Christian would have been eight and Kelly would have been nine or ten, I decided I was going to learn how to cook omelette’s the way Grandpa Milo made them when I was a little boy. He made his omelette’s very thin and filled them with small pieces of ham, cheese, sausage, scallions, etc. It took me a long time to figure out how to do that. There were many failures, some of them even embarrassing failures involving invited dinner guests, but I eventually got it figured out. They are especially good with some of Lorena’s pico de gallo. Then in a series of Saturdays over a period of a couple of months when we lived in Albany, I taught the kids how to make these omelette’s. Both of the kids can do really well with them, but it has become a specialty of Christian’s.
This year, along with her knitting, Kelly has gotten onto an extended cooking kick. I think it might have started with one of the stints with Grandpa Milo, but it has gone way past that now. She regularly bakes cookies and has started in on to pies and tarts. Of course, that is all a bad thing for my diet, but I cannot say that I have not enjoyed it immensely. When she started on the tarts, she got out our copy of the Joy of Cooking and went to work. She peeled the apples and got all the ingredients ready, then got the idea that she really did not like the recipe as it was, so she wanted to make some changes. I advised her to first make the recipe exactly as it appears in the book, then the next time she makes tarts, she can make some changes, see how it comes out, make some more changes the next time, and keep going like that until she has it exactly like she likes it.
That was a stellar plan. She made the first batch. They were not exactly like she liked them, but she learned a little bit better what she did not like. When she made the second batch, we were in somewhat of a hurry, so she did not change the recipe much, but she made them in a pie dish (a very large tart) rather than the cupcake pan that she had used previously. She is on a quest now to find just the right filling to put in with the apples because the eggs in the current recipe give neither the texture nor the taste she wants. I am hoping she will find this soon in another cookbook or through experimentation. I am also encouraging her to do cherry tarts. Aunt Julia, when she was Kelly’s age, made cherry tarts and I have been a fan ever since.