In the kitchen

By Christina Hall | The Natchez Democrat

Published Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Last year when I got ready to send my son Matthew off to college I had to make sure there were certain things that he knew how to do on his own, laundry being one of them.

As excited as he is this year to be moving into our townhouse it did occur to both of us that we might need to work on his cooking skills. We went down the list of things he can cook and I soon realized that his definition of “cooking” is vastly different than mine.

We started with heating up hot dogs and Hormel entrees in the microwave and then he threw in that he could open and heat up soup. Before I fainted in disbelief he did tell me that he can scramble a mean egg.

So now I am trying to decide what we definitely need to cover in our summer cooking class. Fortunately one evening at High Cotton while I was taking a cooking class I found out that they would be offering classes just for graduates this summer and I immediately signed him up. I asked the businesses owner’s the Hosfords if they knew they were going to have a class full of kids who knew nothing whatsoever about cooking, and they assured me they would be ready with some good but easy recipes.

When I got home I told him about the classes. He said, “OK, I’ll go, we ought to have fun.” I laughed and told him that there was no “we.” After all I can cook and he didn’t need me to go with him.

For all my believing in treating girls and boys the same the fact is we just don’t. When Holly left home she had been in the kitchen with me off and on for sometime and when she moved out of the dorm she stocked her kitchen and cooked for herself without any trouble.

So I guess if I don’t want Matthew to eat eggs, hot dogs and soup every meal I better figure out some things to teach him.

The thing is the items he likes most of all are things that I usually prepare in big quantities and take a while such a pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy or spaghetti sauce.

And also, I figured out that I am going to have to tell him some of the things that I do to his food that he really doesn’t know about and probably won’t be very excited to hear. Such as that (big) spoonful of mayonnaise or sour cream that goes into the homemade mashed potatoes that he loves, or that in my roast gravy I usually mash up most of the carrots that I cooked with it to make the gravy thicker (he doesn’t eat them) and he has probably outgrown my telling him that the reason brown rice is brown is because it already has gravy in it.

Go ahead and laugh, when you are trying to make a meat and starch guy healthier you will say anything.

Not only is this going to be fun and give me a chance to spend some time with my son I was thinking I might video the whole process.

Then we can either send it into the Food Network for the next chef contest or at the least we’ll send it off to Funniest Home Videos and try to make a little money.

Christina Hall writes a weekly column for The Democrat. She can be reached at christina.hall@natchezdemocrat.com.