The Kitchener Stitch in knitting is a way of knitting two rows of live stitches together. It is used to close the open toe of a hand knitted sock. Socks are my favorite form of knitting. Although I venture off to more complex and larger projects, what I love most is knitting socks. When the idea for starting a cooking blog hit me I was finishing a sock, doing the Kitchener Stitch. Lightbulb moment: I had gone from doing a lot of Kitchener to spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Aha! The name for a new blog was coined, "Kitchener to Kitchen"! So now, a couple of posts into it, you know how it came about.
I am not a Chef. I would not say I am a Cook. I will stretch my perceived definition of one and call myself a home cook. Notice I did not make that "Home Cook." I am an eater who enjoys cooking, reading cookbooks (yes, like novels!), and watching food TV--the Food Channel, the Cooking Channel and any cooking related show that happens to come on another channel.
I grew up eating the southern food which came to be called "Soul Food" in later years. My grandmother was from South Carolina and she did the cooking. We had rice every day for dinner except Fridays when we had fried fish with stewed tomatoes and white potatoes--boiled mostly, but sometimes mashed. Back then I was not an eater. I liked most things that Grandmom cooked, but was not a big eater. My favorite meal was fried chicken, riceandgravy (all one word) and green peas from a can. I liked vegetables that most kids would push aside: spinach, string beans, cabbage, collards and kale.
I've always been an adventurous eater even when "I didn't eat enough to keep a bird alive." as I was reminded at almost every meal. I ate raw clams off the half shell, boiled crabs learning how to crack them and eat everything except "the dead man's fingers" (the lungs), and chitterlings and hog maws. Yes!
As a newlywed working in an office with young women in the same situation, we joined forces and learned to cook anything we wanted from a cookbook. I remember my first cookbook purchase, McCalls Cookbook published in 1963. I put a lot of miles on that book. The cover and page corners were chewed by our first puppy. It accumulated food drippings, greasy fingerprints and showed the stress of being stuffed full of recipes cut from newspapers and magazines. When the Internet gave birth to eBay I was able to find this better looking replacement which I still have.
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| My McCalls Cookbook Copyright 1963 |
I also have another copy. It belonged to my aunt. Although she was already a great cook and into her senior citizen years, I raved about the book so much she bought a copy. I don't think she ever used it.
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| My aunt's copy of the McCall's Cookbook on shelf with other collectibles |
My two most used recipes from that cookbook are (1) Refrigerator Rolls and (2) Spaghetti with Meatball Sauce. I haven't made either one in years. Maybe I'll bring them back now.
Before the Mc Call's Cookbook, another cookbook played an important part in my cooking life. I got it in Junior High School: Food and Nutrition for the Family. It was a publication of the Philadelphia School District. We were given the cookbook and taught to cook in school back then. I still have that cookbook and refer to it from time to time. It is amazing how small the portion sizes were then. No wonder we were not an obese society in those days. I'm fighting my way back to those measures of portion size. Although I still have the tattered and torn original (couldn't part with my maiden name written in my junior high penmanship), this is also a book I was able to acquire in this much better condition from eBay. At least the cover is still attached. What did we ever do before the Internet?
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| My Junior High School Cooking Class Textbook. |
Marilyn,
Kitchener to Kitchen
