Kitchen Magic

As a young girl, I always wanted to be able to bake and cook wondrous things. I begged and begged for an Easy-bake Oven, and when I finally got it I was so excited that I opened up the little cake mixes, said an incantation, put in as much water as I thought it would need (about a gallon) and then set the little pan inside the marvelous machine to bake.

Imagine my disappointment when after an hour and a half I had made a sort of icky pudding.

I made my little brother eat it.

I didn't grow up with a very good culinary example. Quite regularly, my mom burned pan after pan of water leaving us to just lick the powder from the Not-So-Easy-Mac.

Although my mom could bake, in a recent incident before she her cataract surgery, she mistook the chili powder for cinnamon and made the very first Mexican-influenced apple pie. Olé! Bleh.

However, my road to cooking like the road to Rome, didn't run smooth. Or is that the road to true love? Either route, there's roadwork.

There was the apple Betty I made with garlic croutons. There was the door-stop tomato cake whose smell still haunts my memories. There was the meat loaf that was light on meat, heavy on oat, thereby being more of an oat loaf. There was the time I experimented with a combination of vinegar, onions, and bacon.

And now... there is a cookbook.