Posted by picapica on 2004-08-10 15:49:53
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I love green corn chili cheese tamales! I think I always learn better by doing the actual project (food or otherwise) with someone than trying to follow written directions. Plus, it's a nice opportunity to sip some wine and catch up on each other's lives.
My mom and her best friend JoAnn cook together all the time (professionally and casually) and last year we started the first of what was called their "cooking institutes". I wanted them to teach me how to make pirogi and then JoAnn's daughter-in-law came too. I've known JoAnn and her family since I was born, but as an adult, we rarely see each other. This was a good opportunity to catch up with her and get to know her new daughter-in-law. We had a great time and learned a lot about how the recipe changed from her mother's generation to her and will probably change with us. Afterword we ate a huge meal and all of our men cleaned up (they had been out drinking/male bonding during our classtime). It was fun to do something with several generations that was a learning experience but was also a fun social time as well. This year I think we will do a Christmas cookie "institute" and mom and I are going to do a canning institute in a couple of weeks so I can make my mother-in-law's neighbor's killer hotsauce.
Food is really important to my mom's family. My mother cooks professionally and her father and brother were/are farmers. My earliest memories involve group food events such as apple butter making and butchering, unfortunately we don't do the latter any more and the former only rarely. Although all family events do still include major food preparation. It's nice to do these things during non-holiday stressful times. I love cooking with my mom, but sometimes we have too many mother-daughter issues that come up during the process. Bringing other people into the equation sometimes allivates that stress.
Wow this is a really long post and I just noticed how amazing it is that something as basic as food can touch on so many other issues!
Posted by sallysunshine on 2004-12-11 12:39:24
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In her Christmas cookie book, Rose Levy Beranbaum (of *Cake Bible* fame) has a recipe/ pattern for a really insane gingerbread cathedral complete with stained glass windows. And I mean insane in the best possible way. I don't even celebrate Christmas, and I'm dying to make a gingerbread cathedral.
