The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (45 page)

Of all the volunteers, I was most intrigued by Donna. I genuinely liked her and was sympathetic to the power struggle over food and cooking in her new marriage. We never managed a date for a second home visit. After a few months, I sensed that the project had had no lasting effect on her and she was simply too polite to let me down.

Finally, a year after the project ended, we caught up on the phone. “Honestly, I didn't change my lifestyle much right after the classes,” she started, my initial suspicions confirmed. “But there's one phrase that repeats in my head, even to this day. When you were at my house, you said, ‘Do you ever wonder what they do to foods to make them low-fat?' I guess I never cared before. Crappy food had always been a fact of life. But then I started questioning things, although not much else changed.”

Then, a few months earlier, she had started to cook on Sundays. “I'm not sure how it started, but I just decided that Sunday was the only real time that I have to cook.” She made three or four meals, and then wrapped them up in individual servings to eat for lunch or dinner throughout the week. She favored vegetable-centric dishes that pack well; vegetarian chili was a standard in her rotation. In the three months since she'd started, she'd lost ten pounds.

“After years of trying to find the ‘secret' to battling my weight issues, I seem to have found it in cooking,” she said. “I'm an emotional eater. Taking my food with me to work and eating the same things has helped me maintain that food is fuel and not luxury or reward.”

She doesn't come home ravenous anymore, a good thing because her husband lost all interest in cooking, a major shift in the original context of their relationship. “He eats mostly frozen food now,” she said. “I don't want that for myself but I don't want to fight him about it either. If he cooks, that's okay, but I don't rely on him to do it anymore,” she said, adding that he's still about ninety pounds overweight. “Now if we eat something homemade, I make it. The thing is that he hasn't changed, I'm the one who has changed,” she said. You could hear a surge of independence in her voice. “It's pretty exciting, really.”

When we first met, her husband selected most of their groceries, but his shopping ethos troubled her. He'd buy five heads of lettuce at a warehouse store, only to throw away three. It conflicted with the values from her day job working with an African aid organization. Now she shops for her food, and he shops for his.

“So I still buy a lot at the warehouse store because they have good deals, but now I go with a friend from work. We shop together and then we split it. Doing that has helped me save money but waste less food. It's fun, too. My friend and I trade recipes and catch up.” For fruits and vegetables, she hits a farm stand near her house two or three times a week. “I've been trying to eat organic, too. I am now okay with paying a little more to get something local or organic. My husband thinks I'm crazy but he supports me.”

As Donna made the same recipes over and over again, she found herself experimenting with them. “I used to follow everything to the letter. Now I'm not a slave to a recipe. I trust my taste more, and I'm getting better at knowing when a dish needs something and what that might be.”

As with the other volunteers, small bits of information had had an impact. “I didn't realize spices expired! I thought they lasted forever. I think it's crazy to make a pasta dish from a package. It's about the same amount of work and mine tastes so much better.” She'd even made gnocchi from scratch, something I personally have yet to master. “I had a lot of potatoes and I thought that I could probably figure it out. I've done it a few times and I'm getting really good at it now.”

Not long ago, she made her mother-in-law's classic white rolls. The first time she tried them, they turned out well. When Donna made them at her mother's house, they burned. “In the past, I would have thought it was my fault. See? This is proof that I can't cook. But this time I thought, Oh, well, I can make these, it's her oven, and this isn't about my ability. It's a bigger shift in my own self-worth.”

She credits a chicken with some of her confidence.

“I had wanted to roast a chicken, but I always felt intimidated.” A few months ago, she had bought her first whole chicken. She delighted in the sense of victory when it turned out perfectly. Now roast chicken is one of her staples. “A week ago, my friend came over and she said, ‘Wow, look at you, you're an amazing cook.' And I thought, What? It's just a roast chicken.” Then she remembered that not that long ago that was a big deal.

“So I've encouraged people around me to cook. I know that it makes such a difference. Small changes put together can be big enough to change your whole life,” she said. “I have a friend who always bought her vegetables precut. When I asked why, she said she was scared of knives. I was, too, before this started. So I showed her how it's done, so she could get past her fear.”

This, she said, was the greatest lesson. “You get so afraid of things and then you do them and think, What was I so afraid of? You just have to do it.”

 

How had I changed? My spice drawer is immaculate, thanks to the Great Spice Cleanout of 2009. Our freezer is lined with pasture-raised beef, pork, and chicken, a nod to the various classes on the subject and, in a way, a circle back to my early life on the farm in Michigan. I make soup at least once a week now to clean out my fridge. As Thierry suggested, we have a photo in the back of our fridge, an image of Mike and me embracing in Paris, taken by Holly during the AAA tour.

I often think of that speech I gave at the Cordon Bleu graduation. In a blur of anxiety and grief, I urged the graduates to find something they were passionate about and just go for it. What I didn't realize then was that I needed that advice as much as anyone in the audience, and I learned as much as or more than any of the volunteers over the course of the project, including unexpected things I didn't even know needed to change.

Not long after the project ended, Mike announced that he was going to make Alfredo sauce. I hovered. “Maybe you should add some garlic,” I started. “You might not want to stir it so much.” Then, “Oh, hey, you know, you could add some of the chicken stock in the fridge. It's a different way to do it, but . . .”

Mike handed me the spatula. “Fine, you finish it the way you want it.”

“But I was just trying to be helpful,” I told him.

“This is why I don't like to cook with you in the kitchen,” he said heatedly. “You know why I always make Thai food? You never try to correct me on it.” I knew how he felt. It replayed a similar scene from earlier in the summer.

When we moved back to the United States in 2005, I hadn't owned a car for six years. Mike would sit in the passenger seat and offer me “helpful” tips. “Kat, there's a pedestrian over there.” Then, “Oh, you'll probably want to slow down, there's a sharp turn coming up.” Or, if he felt that I was going too slowly, “You know the speed limit is forty-five here, right?”

It made me so nervous, I'd second-guess myself. Even if he didn't say a word, I felt him silently critiquing my every move. Only weeks before the Alfredo episode, I had pulled over, unbuckled my seat belt, and said, “Fine, you drive.” His shock at my response was the same as mine to his irritated resignation about the pasta.

In the midst of a project designed to encourage people to cook, it seemed I thwarted the person closest to me. I learned to back off, to let him explore his own tastes and give him the reign of the kitchen now and then. As a result, he flourished as a cook. Now we routinely cook together.

But that's the thing about teaching. You find lessons you never expected beyond the ones you've taught. I'm grateful for that existential crisis onstage in Paris. Sometimes we need a good shake-up to remind us of who and where we are in life and to prompt us to change courses. Am I a chef? Not really, but how well does a single word define us? Julia Child never needed or wanted the title of chef. I write, I cook, I teach. I know that I'm the sum of those passions.

With that, I'm off to take a class on canning with Shannon. She recently earned her “Master Canner” designation. Last summer, Shannon didn't know how to hold a knife. Tomorrow, she will teach me how to preserve pears. It's the most fitting close to the circle that I can imagine. We live, we learn, we teach one another. Isn't that the way it should be?

 

In this section, you'll find a few other recipes taught in or developed as a result of the project. Most are meant to replicate items frequently purchased. Go ahead, give them a try.

 

 

 

 

1
pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts or tenders
1 cup bread crumbs
cup grated Parmesan cheese
teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon dried thyme or mixed herbs
Pinch of cayenne (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper
1 egg
cup skim milk, yogurt, or buttermilk
Cooking spray