Up in Ontario

My Education in Cooking

Gradually over the last many years I have worked on my cooking abilities. I discovered soon after moving out on my own that in order to eat well - something I liked to do - I had to either pay someone else to cook for me or I had to learn to cook for myself. So learning to cook for myself it was.

The first source I turned to for information was my mother, a wonderful cook of hearty comfort foods. Stews, soups, chilis, sauces and pastas and roasts all turned out of our kitchen rich and savoury with flavour. I can largely trace my current tastes to this elemental knowledge. And since mom was a nurse our dishes were largely prepared with an eye for health. The Canada Food Guide hung on our fridge door. For my first birthday after I moved out Mom sent me a recipe book filled with some of her best creations. She'll be the first to mention that many of them are cribbed from other sources, but to me they're all hers.

Over the intervening few years I have worked out that original recipe book to the point that its spiral binding has loosened and come apart at the end and care must be taken in its handling. Many of the pages show drip and spatter stains and one section of pages has a fine powdery feel to them, as if covered in a dusting of flour. Various yellowed clippings from newspapers, scraps of paper and leaflets are stuffed in at different sections. Because the Duck is alergic to all fish we have remarked the Fish section Wines to keep track of any good vintage that comes across our palate, although I never remember to write anything in there and I just have seven or eight labels I recognize in the liquor store for assurance, paired with an appetite for experimentation, a stunned browser's look in the store and an openness for new things.

More recently I have turned to new sources for inspiration: local people growing and selling the basic foodstuffs and books. In the coming days I'll cover the locals and the books. In the meantime, check out the website of Peter Hertzmann and in particular his sections on how to select, use and care for knives and how to cut vegetables. All the above links brought to, and hence brought to you, from the brand new and very cool website/blog LifeHacks.com.