Good Times ...

I forget the original post on Facebook, but it began a walk down memory lane.

A high school friend, in response to my comment, said something about my lack of cooking agility when we were teenagers. In fact, I only knew how to cook if it involved a microwave, and she had never seen a microwave until she had been at my house.

Oh my goodness, until that comment, I had totally forgotten about my total lack of competency in the kitchen.

In college I regularly babysat for this one family, the gig usually called for me to cook dinner. The parents always made it easy, hot dogs and macaroni and cheese (out of a box.) The first time she was showing me where everything was, she pulled out a pan, with the hot dogs.

Pan, for hot dogs? How do you cook the hot dogs on a stove? How do you use a stove?

Over the years I've learned to cook. In fact, I love to cook ... if you haven't been able to tell by now.

I think it began my junior year in college. I was living in a house with 6 other people. We took turns cooking. My cooking day was a Tuesday, and I was paired with another housemate. We would return home early afternoon and start prepping.

I'm not sure what took all afternoon for us to prep? We were college students, on a shoe string budget, and most of our recipes came from "More with Less" or another cookbook that dealt used less then 5 ingredients.

We did talk. We talked with each other while we chopped onions and peppers. We chatted with our house mates as they returned home.

Cooking became a social event.

Then I married my Hubby, and he inspired me some more. He served as an apprentice chef for 9 months, right out of high school; and then he went to college and became an engineer.

I also spent the first year of our marriage pseudo-unemployed, I had lots of time to putter in the kitchen.

Somewhere, throughout the years, I learned how to cook ... and I learned to enjoy it. And through the years I forgot about my humble beginnings with the microwave. However, though removed from those early babysitting days, I haven't forgotten about the ease of macaroni and cheese (out of a box) and hot dogs for the kids. Somethings never change.