Do you cook like your mother?

[Sherry in OH]

The cooking threads have me wondering ...

 

My mother was a good cook, but did not enjoy it. She cooked plain meals, mostly from scratch. Canned soups and boxed mac and cheese were available for children to make for lunch, they were never served for dinner. As soon as my sisters and I were old enough to help we did. By the time we were in high school, we made most of the meals.

 

I love to cook and experiment with recipes. I usually cook from scratch. (I do buy jars of spaghetti sauce and frozen tortellini.) We eat out a couple times a month.

 

One of my sisters views cooking as a necessary evil. She can and does cook, but does not enjoy it. She buys a fair amount of convenience foods and they eat out a lot.

 

My other sister rarely cooks anything. Her husband does some cooking, otherwise they eat out or have convenience foods.

 

We all grew up in the same family. What does that say for my sons? Will they prefer homemade meals because that is what mom fed them or will they develop a taste for fast foods?

[nono]

No. Both my sister and I cook much, much better than my Mother.

 

My Mother was a baker. Definitely not a good cook.

[bettyandbob]

No, my mother knows how to cook, but is awful. No nice way to say it. My brother, sister and I are very good cooks. Of the three of us I cook mostly from whole foods and my sister, who studied restaurant management, cooks mostly from boxes. My brother falls in between. Growing up my parents didn't teach us, but they expected us to prepare all dinners and breakfast. We learned with a well-worn Betty Crocker general cookbook.

 

I'm the youngest. I have no idea when the reigns of dinner prep were handed off to kids. I do not recall my mom making dinner. I remember her cooking on holidays.

[Pata]

My mom was a good cook and she taught me a lot about cooking, but she did cook mostly the standard stuff and lots of chicken. She also made incredible desserts! I love to cook and find it's therapeutic for me. I'll cook the standards, but I really love to play around in the kitchen, I very rarely follow a recipe exactly. We'll eat Indian dahl, BBQ, Thai Curry, Chinese Stir-fry and enchiladas all in the same. Needless to say, my spice cabinet is much fuller than my mother's every was :D.

[Chris in VA]

My mom made the standard roasts, chicken (not fried), pork chops, steaks--meat was big in my house, at every dinner. She did make homemade spagetti sauce (with canned tomatoes) and a couple of soups, but nothing fancy. We didn't grow up with any "international" foods--spagetti and stuffed cabbage were about it in that dept. Nothing spicy, nothing she thought was exotic.

 

Peas and corn counted at vegetables. They were canned, except when we had corn on the cob in the summer. We either had potatoes (only baked or mashed, with the very occasional french fry thrown in there) or white rice (only Minute) at every dinner.

 

I never had tacos or dal or anything considered Middle Eastern, Chinese/Japanese, Mexican...She was German by origin, and it showed, but only by her temperment--she didn't make her own sauerkraut or sausage or anything else remotely German.

 

I probably have a wider repetoire, but I'm a pretty lousy cook. :D

[kewb]

My mom is a good cook. I am a good cook. We excel at different dishes.

[gingersmom]

My mother can be nominated for worst cook ever. She would agree.

 

She hated cooking and put the minimum amount of effort into it.

 

Thanks to her hatred of turning the oven on me and my siblings were treated to meals at some of the fancy restaurants in NYC on a fairly regularly basis.

 

I love love love to cook as much as she hated it.

[Lawana]

Oh gosh, I hope not. I did learn the basics of nutrition, meal planning, and cooking from my mother, but she had a particularly utilitarian idea of food preparation, and it showed.

She came by her lack of inspiration honestly, though. Being raised on a farm, there was always plenty of food, but monotonous in preparation. And my grandmother was a linear thinker. First she cooked the meat until it was done, then put it on the back of the (coal) stove. Next she cooked the potatoes until they were done, and put those on the back of the stove. Then the vegetable, and finally the gravy. One of my aunts explained it this way, "I didn't know, until I was in high school and discovered a cook book, that food could taste good."

[stephanier.1765]

My mom made the standard roasts, chicken (not fried), pork chops, steaks--meat was big in my house, at every dinner. She did make homemade spagetti sauce (with canned tomatoes) and a couple of soups, but nothing fancy. We didn't grow up with any "international" foods--spagetti and stuffed cabbage were about it in that dept. Nothing spicy, nothing she thought was exotic.

 

Peas and corn counted at vegetables. They were canned, except when we had corn on the cob in the summer. We either had potatoes (only baked or mashed, with the very occasional french fry thrown in there) or white rice (only Minute) at every dinner.

 

I never had tacos or dal or anything considered Middle Eastern, Chinese/Japanese, Mexican...She was German by origin, and it showed, but only by her temperment--she didn't make her own sauerkraut or sausage or anything else remotely German.

 

I probably have a wider repetoire, but I'm a pretty lousy cook. :D

 

Except for the German part, I could have written this post exactly. My mother is a good cook but she cooks the standard meat and potato type of meals: meatloaf, pot roast, pork chops. I pretty much don't cook those things because she does them so well that nothing I do comes close but I do cook a wide variety of things. I just hate to cook. I hate that it's considered my job because I'm the woman. Ugh! I also don't sew. I love to quilt but when it comes to clothes repair leave me out. :tongue_smilie:

[Mommyfaithe]

My mom did not cook after I learned how. Before that it was hamburgers, chicken (baked in the oven) beef stew or spaghetti with a jar of sauce. I didn't even know you could make food from scratch! We always had fresh veggies and fruit though....and all the sugar cereal and chef boyardee a kid could want. We had swansons in the freezer and campbells in the cupboard. I am thankful we were never hungry, but I do think most of my adult health problems come from the poor nutrition of my childhood. It wasn't intended.....they just didn't know any better...and we had FOOD....

 

Faithe

[FaithManor]

No,

 

My mother learned to cook in the don't worry about what's in your food era and though it tastes good going down, is brutally unhealthy. Every vegetable is swimming and brimming in gravies and sauces to make it taste good. She never knew anything about herbs and spices so garlic salt, celery salt, and onion salt, plus regular salt....see a theme here??? are the "spices" of choice. She doesn't read food labels so she purchases a lot of things heavily laden with hydrogenated oils and HCFS, even artificial sweeteners which are especially bad for ds because aspartame and the like interfere with the proper break down of adrenal hormones in the blood stream. Ugh, I have to watch everything he eats over there.

 

I cook totally from scratch, 75% organic when the checkbook allows it, good fats - organic dairy, olive oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil, flaxseed...if I make a pie crust, I use a combo of butter and coconut oil no shortening. I also pre-break down the B vitamins in whole grain flours before using them by mixing them with a little greek yogurt and a totally pulverized tablet of probiotics in addition to the yogurt...I let that work for a minimum of 12 hours before I use the flour.

 

She loves the way I cook but she doesn't attempt to change her own approach. But, she's in her late 60's and because they economy tanked and their retirement savings are now less than 25% of what they once were, she can't retire and so working full time at that age makes change very difficult. She's just so tired when she gets home from work.

 

DD sometimes runs down and makes a meal for them and they love it! She enjoys cooking and follows my foot steps concerning nutrition.

 

For the record, I HATE cooking and plan on eating nothing more than soup and salad when the last child leaves home. If DH wants something else, he'll have to fix it himself. After this many years and my youngest still has almost 8 years before college, I'm finding that brain goes a little fuzzy when I have to do meal planning...by the time he leaves, I'll be catatonic!

 

Faith

[lisabees]

:lol::lol:Nope. My mom would roast whole chickens with salt and pepper, and add baked potatoes and canned veggies. I have no warm and fuzzy feelings about my mother's cooking!

 

I LOVE food - I love to cook food and talk about food. I am a wannabe gourmet chef. I love fresh spices and herbs and foods from around the world. My family loves when I experiment and are the best customers any Mom can ask for! ;)

 

Food. It may be the ONLY positive thing my kids remember me for! :lol::lol:

[2cents]

I cook and bake better than my mom. She had some recipes and we had the same thing over and over again. She also used a lot of canned items and things just didn't taste or look appetizing. Once in awhile she made something for work and those things looked really good but we didn't get any. :( I try to make a variety of foods and more fresh.

[The Girls' Mom]

My mom was a fairly good cook with a limited repitiore..lol. But, she mostly resorted to quick, easy to make stuff like Chef Boy R Dee, and Hamburger Helper. Then she'd get on a kick and make beans and cornbread, or BBQ (yum).

 

I did discover that once I started cooking on my own, I didn't like her cooking as I did before. After I would go back home, her cooking seemed so heavy and greasy.

[Parrothead]

I got lucky in one respect, my parents don't like hamburger helper or velveeta cheese. My mom wanted to be adventurous with food, but my dad not so much. So when my dad was at sea, we would eat things like homemade fried rice. When he was home it was some kind of meat, a potato and a can of some veg. The only variations on that were beef stew, spaghetti or chili.

 

That is what I learned to cook.

 

At some point in my late teens the dynamic changed. Daddy is still a meat and potatoes man but not like when we were kids. He started cooking since there were days he got home before mom. They also gotten older and gotten on the healthy eating bandwagon.

 

I've changed my cooking style over the last few years. She and I will swap recipes and ideas. If I send her a vegetarian recipe she will prepare it, but has to throw some kind of beef or chicken into it.

[littlebug42]

I do mostly cook like my Mom. She and my Grandma were excellent cooks so I learned by watching both of them. I do not always cook the same things particularly because my dh's family is from Wisconsin and mine from Kentucky so I have incorporated things that he also likes that I wouldn't really have been served growing up.

[lisabelle]

N.O. I do not cook like my mother. She hardly cooked, and what she did cook was repulsive.

 

She truly did not care about nutrition. I think she believes food is just something you had to put in your body to keep running--and the less fuss, the better. Even today (well, truth be told it's been about 5 years since I've been in contact with her), she considers salami dipped in salsa to be a perfectly legitimate meal for herself.

[Hedgehog]

Both my mum and I love cooking, as do my sisters, aunts and grandmas. We can all cook a good plain dinner, make desserts and bake a mean cake, but also each of us has experimented with different cuisines over the years. My speciality is Indian food.. I have a spice rack with 58 different spices in it :D and I'm proud to say that none of them are salt, curry powder or Chinese 5-/Thai 7-spice!

 

I'm not sure if I'm a GOOD cook.. you'd have to ask DH and the kids!! Oh - the one thing I have never been able to make successfully is homemade pastry. My attempts taste like cardboard; in fact you might just as well eat a cereal box LOL :lol:

[Farrar]

I hope so!

 

My mother is an amazing cook. She taught me a lot. I think I'm a better baker than her, but I still think she's an overall better cook than me. Also, I have serious range/oven jealousy about her. She has a Kenmore Pro that she got when she remodeled her kitchen a couple years ago. The difference from my cruddy cheap Home Depot range is just light years. But it also gives me a nice excuse when things don't turn out as well as when she makes them now.

[Hunter's Moon]

The only thing my mother ever cooked when I was younger was pasta, and that was if my father would be home late and couldn't cook for us.

 

My father does the cooking and I do the cooking.

 

She'll occasionally pop something in the oven, but that is it.

 

So, I suppose I cook like my father, not my mother.

 

Lots of pepper, garlic, and lemon :D

[stripe]

No.

 

And my mother cooks nothing like her mother.

 

I did learn to bake some things from my grandma. My mom only started baking when I moved out of the house.

[fairfarmhand]

nope. I cook way more nutritiously. My mom was a decent cook, but my dad doesn't like any vegetables at all and she cooked to please him. So they had lots of casseroles, Hamburger helper, SLoppy joes with tater tots, pasta dishes. But nothing very colorful.

[MamaT]

My mom did not cook after I learned how. Before that it was hamburgers, chicken (baked in the oven) beef stew or spaghetti with a jar of sauce. I didn't even know you could make food from scratch! We always had fresh veggies and fruit though....and all the sugar cereal and chef boyardee a kid could want. We had swansons in the freezer and campbells in the cupboard. I am thankful we were never hungry, but I do think most of my adult health problems come from the poor nutrition of my childhood. It wasn't intended.....they just didn't know any better...and we had FOOD....

 

Faithe

 

This sounds like my mother. My dad cooked when he had time and was good at it. I have a sheet of paper with my dad's bread recipes on it that he and I wrote down before I got married. I still go to his recipes to make cornbread, biscuits, pancakes, and hushpuppies.

[nova mama]

I wish!

 

Everything she makes tastes so good, no matter how simple. When she comes over to babysit, she always a meal (or two) ready when DH and I return. Just a few days ago I was trying to imitate her chicken and veggie saute and I called to ask her how she seasoned it. She said olive oil, salt, and pepper. But there's no way! I tried the same and it did not turn out like hers. :glare: She just has the right touch. I hope I can cook like her one day.

Edited November 25, 2010 by nova mama
For example ...

[JustGin]

The cooking threads have me wondering ...

 

My mother was a good cook, but did not enjoy it. She cooked plain meals, mostly from scratch. Canned soups and boxed mac and cheese were available for children to make for lunch, they were never served for dinner. As soon as my sisters and I were old enough to help we did. By the time we were in high school, we made most of the meals.

 

I love to cook and experiment with recipes. I usually cook from scratch. (I do buy jars of spaghetti sauce and frozen tortellini.) We eat out a couple times a month.

 

One of my sisters views cooking as a necessary evil. She can and does cook, but does not enjoy it. She buys a fair amount of convenience foods and they eat out a lot.

 

My other sister rarely cooks anything. Her husband does some cooking, otherwise they eat out or have convenience foods.

 

We all grew up in the same family. What does that say for my sons? Will they prefer homemade meals because that is what mom fed them or will they develop a taste for fast foods?

 

Nope, not much like my mom, though bless her heart she did the best she could. I cook mostly from scratch and I enjoy cooking and feeding my family. We also eat much healthier food than what my mom served back in the day. In her defense, we were way below the poverty line and I think she did the best she could with what she had which wasn't much. She had some pretty interesting concoctions though, like cream tuna on toast which I have never been brave enough to try again since I left home. LOL

[Mejane]

Not at all. My mother fried everthing, never served salad or a fresh vegetable (canned only), and believed every meal should include potatoes in some form. We had soda with every meal as well. :tongue_smilie:

[joannqn]

My mom was an awful cook; I'm considered a really good cook by both my immediate family and friends.

 

My mom was an unadventurous cook. She never really used any spices except salt, pepper, and garlic salt. Spaghetti sauce consisted of ground beef, tomato sauce, salt, pepper, and garlic salt. We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Rice-a-Roni, etc. We always had plenty of Hostess cake-type junk food available, though she did make boxed cake and chocolate chip cookies occasionally. By high school, it was my job to cook dinner Monday through Friday even though I had never been taught to cook. I was handed a box of Hamburger Helper and told to follow the directions.

 

I've taught myself to cook over the years, have 35+ spices in my cabinet, and use most of them. I've discovered some foods I HATED as a child are actually really good when cooked well.

[Aubrey]

Oh, heavens, NO! When dh & I got married, I thought dumping a can of green beans in a bowl & microwaving it constituted a really good side dish or snack. :svengo:

 

I still don't like cooking (neither does Mom), but if I'm going to do it, I'm going to peel sweet potatoes, clip fresh green beans, use spices. I had literally never used anything beyond salt & the occasional dash of pepper before moving out of Mom's house. AND, I thought learning to use spices was impossible. Garlic? How on earth would you know when/how much to use? :lol:

 

ETA: I thought school lunch food was good. Really good.

[Laurie4b]

My grandmother loved to cook and taught me how to bake. She cooked standard Caucasian American foods of the 1940's-1970's. She experimented with some Julia Child French cooking and definitely with desserts. My mother was proud of her cooking as a hostess, but did not like to cook. For dinner, we had standard Caucasian American foods. Spaghetti with meat sauce was our one "foreign" meal, LOL! I worked in restaurants as a teen through grad school and was exposed to more cooking techniques and more dishes through those experiences.

 

I cook differently than the dinner fare they served. No fried food, more vegetarian-based food, more foods/flavorings from other cultures. We try something new fairly regularly. I hate baking, but can do it well because of my grandmother's training. I don't like cooking on a schedule (do they really want to eat every night? Shees! :) ) I dislike the tedium of cooking (chopping, cleaning, etc.)but like the artistry of creating the flavors. I have created several dishes on my own.

[Tap]

My mom is a good, but limited cook. She made the basics and did a good job, but never really ventured out of her comfort zone much. She can throw together misc items in a pan and have it come out edible, so I know there is a lot of creativity inside her.

 

 

I try to venture out more than she did. I can cook pretty good. I am not a chef by any means, but can make just about anything if I have a recipe or at least a general idea of what I am doing.

 

 

 

Ds16 hates fast food. His current girlfriend, is in college, but really wants to be a housewife and a mother above anything else. He says she is an okay cook, but I get the impression they use a lot of boxed items, and I don´t think that will fly with him if they end up together. I have seriously considered offering to pay for them to both take a cooking class. I do not like to teach cooking to my kids. Math and history are fine, for some reason I really hate having people under my feet when I am cooking.

 

I doubt they will end up together, but her parents have been together since their teens and so have dh and I. I don´t want to rule out the possibility. I figure that if I pay for them both to go, ds will learn too. So, whether or not they end up together, there will be some benefit that comes out of it.

Edited November 25, 2010 by Tap, tap, tap

[joannqn]

ETA: I thought school lunch food was good. Really good.

 

eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwww!

[Ravin]

My maternal grandmother does not cook. I'm pretty sure she was feeding her kids convenience foods in the 1950's. Mom, on the other hand, cooked from scratch--and learned canning and kept a large garden when we were small. When she had health problems that limited her mobility when I was a preteen, we started eating more convenience foods like hamburger helper, etc., and I started doing more of the cooking.

 

When her health got better, she moved away from that some, but I'd say now she pretty evenly cooks scratch and convenience stuff, though on the whole much healthier type convenience stuff and fresher food--salad, etc.--that's quick to prepare. Of course, she's in her sixties and has two preschoolers, so mixing in a storebought lasagna now and then is understandable. She's never done a lot of eating out.

 

I cook from scratch a fair bit, but also keep around convenience foods, probably a 60/40 mix. Scratch cooking has been happening more aroudn here since DH lost his job--he's a trained chef and just about anything he makes is really good, though he hasn't quite got the knack for pantry-diving when we're running short of things. DW#2, on the other hand, eats conveniece stuff 90% of the time. She'll cook from scratch maybe twice a month, and for her it's very experimental as I'm pretty sure her mom cooks from quasi-scratch maybe twice a year. She grew up with no cooking, and likewise doesn't cook. DH has encouraged her, and whatever she makes usually turns out yummy. With me it's hit or miss when I experiment.

 

DD shows every sign of enjoying cooking and wanting to do more and more of it. Which is fine by me!

[OnTheBrink]

LOL, no. My mother rarely cooked, and when she did, it usually wasn't very good. Nurturing a family was not her strong suit.

[Diane1]

My mother is a great traditional cook....great holiday suppers...but too much fat and meat and not enough veggies and greens.

[Impish]

Yeah, but my mom is/was weird. Shock, right? I mean, considering how *I* turned out :tongue_smilie:

 

She refused to share recipes. Told us we had to come home for whatever special dish we wanted to make at our own homes.

 

She's gotten better...maybe time, maybe distance?

[Mom in High Heels]

NO! My mother is a very southern cook and everything has ham or bacon or lard in it. Even the vegetables. Ewwww! I can't handle it. Also, my mom doesn't cook fish, rarely has a raw vegetable and thinks if there isn't a meat and 2 vegetables (one MUST be a starch) it isn't a real meal. She only uses iceberg lettuce for salads (ack!) and can't believe that I feed Indy Caesar salad for dinner (as the main dish). Who cares that he ASKS for it.

James Bond, who grew up on southern cooking, LOVES my mom's cooking. When I had Indy, she flew to Germany to stay with us for a month and JB was in heaven. He loved dinner time.

I try to be far more health conscious and we eat really well. JB likes my cooking (Indy LOVES it), but it's not "southern."

[Barry Goldwater]

I'm better :D

[Crimson Wife]

My mom is a good cook. I am a good cook. We excel at different dishes.

 

:iagree:

I tend to cook a bit healthier than she does. She still uses a lot of white carbs and stuff with HFCS despite all the warnings she's received :001_rolleyes:. I also tend to make more ethnic dishes than her. Tacos, enchiladas, and teriyaki chicken/beef is the extent of her ethnic cooking repertoire while I'll cook Indian, Thai, Indonesian, Moroccan, etc.

 

She makes awesome meatballs and for the life of me, I can't keep mine from falling apart. She gave me her recipe but every time I've tried making it, they still wind up "meatball mush". :confused:

[Wendi]

Like some of the other posters, I have a mom who is great at the meat and potatoes meals, but doesn't really enjoy cooking, and has never been into any ethnic foods, trying new recipes, etc. (We did have "tacos" growing up, but they consisted of ground beef seasoned with salt and pepper, cubed American cheese slices, onions, lettuce, and tomato, on corn tortillas.)

 

I like to cook, although I do go through periods when I don't have time or energy to be very creative. Then I go into a period of trying lots of new recipes. I LOVE to cook and eat Asian foods. I've also cooked a few African meals, and hope to try some more soon. Being in the southwest, we also enjoy Mexican food. I'm definitely more adventurous than my mom when it comes to cooking (and eating!).

 

Wendi

[FO4UR]

Nope. My mom didn't cook much at all. She worked crazy hours and we ate fast food almost every night. When she did cook it was boxed or canned.

 

I'm not the best cook, but I do better...then again, I HAVE to...we can't afford fast food every night and I can't stomach feeding my dc too much processed food.

[Ellyndria]

My mom is the queen of nutrition and cooking. She is a creative cook and can usually put whatever together and it tastes good. She also frequently made tortillas, and baked healthy breads and muffins while I was growing up. She also loves veggies more than anyone else I know.

 

Me... I dunno, I guess I'm a decent cook. I mean, I can follow a recipe or make minor modifications to it and it turns out good (as long as it was a good recipe to start with! heh). I'm not a creative cook though, but in recent years I have gotten better about throwing things together without a recipe. I have a decently stocked spice cabinet, similar to what my mom had while I was growing up. I've also been trying to buy organic when I can in the past few years.

 

There *are* some convenience foods around. Namely, Kraft (and Annie's) mac and cheese (I can make my own, but sometimes people want Kraft), jarred spaghetti sauce (I have made my own, but I haven't found a recipe I loved enough to want to make it more often), canned beans (black, kidney, pinto, and fat free refried beans), low sodium chicken broth, and canned tomatoes. In the freezer for convenience foods, there are typically a few Lean Cuisines and the occasional frozen pizza (DH doesn't cook and likes to have these around for lunch when there aren't leftovers to eat). There's also store bought whole wheat bread in the house, with no HFCS. (Oh, and we won't talk about the chips, cookies, snack mixes, and crackers that make it into the house when DH decides to go to the store. :glare: :angry:)

 

I actually love making my own bread by hand, but it's so time consuming that I almost never do it anymore. I do have a bread machine, but I'm not satisfied with the way the bread comes out in it, and either way, the people in my house will eat homemade bread with butter, but not for sandwiches or toast.

 

I don't particularly like to cook though, it usually feels like a chore, unless I'm feeling inspired. I do like to bake breads, muffins, cookies, etc, BUT I hardly ever do it because then it means we'd EAT a whole lot more than we should of that stuff. :tongue_smilie:

 

Anyway, back to making Thanksgiving dinner! Up next: butternut squash casserole.

Edited November 25, 2010 by Ellyndria

[PiCO]

My mother learned to cook in a home ec class in HS. Her mother wouldn't let her kids into the kitchen.

 

I grew up cooking beside my mom. So, I'm a much better cook because cooking is more intuitive for me. My mother always followed a recipe exactly, I never follow a recipe exactly.

[MamaAkins]

Um, NO! My mom *rarely* cooked anything other than pasta. I entered married life not knowing how to cook much. It's taken years, but I'm constantly learning more and more. I am determined that when my children leave my home, they will all know how to cook a decent number of "regular" dishes. I don't cook everything from scratch, but I would say that I've become a fairly decent cook!

[KrissiK]

I do. I think it runs in the family. My Grandmother was a very good cook and she loved to do it. My one aunt and my mom are very good cooks, too, and they love it. My other aunt is a good cook, but I don't think she likes it quite as much. I love to cook and I think I'm pretty good at it. I'm not a creative cook though (as in just throw things together and they turn out great). I'm a recipe follower, but I love to try new recipes and collect them. My favorite magazines are cooking magazines - I subscribe to 3 of them.

Edited November 25, 2010 by KrissiK

[Whereneverever]

My mom didn't cook a lot, but she did bake. I enjoy both and I really enjoy involving my kids.

 

All I need is someone to do the cleaning for me. ;)

[Carrie12345]

Yes and no.

 

For the most part, my mother kept meals pretty simple - a meat, a starch, a cooked vegetable and a salad. It was all good, but basic. When time and/or money was tight, there were boxed/canned components added.

 

I also cook pretty basic, but aim for a wider variety than I grew up with. And my vegetables are usually raw, since my kids eat more of them that way. One less thing for me to do!

 

These days, my mother likes to experiment in the kitchen, and she's gotten good and creative. When she finds a great dish that's also simple, she usually passes it along and I'll try those, but none of the 12-ingredient, time-consuming stuff!

 

Both of my sisters love to be in the kitchen trying new things, but neither has the time to do so on a regular basis. They're often working or at school during normal dinner hours.

 

I'm the odd ball out in that I technically have the time, but my desire only stretches so far! Which is why my son's interest baffles me, lol.

[8circles]

I wish. I do enjoy cooking but don't have enough time to "do it right" with the current child situation. My mother & my father both are excellent cooks - not fancy but they can make a great healthy meal with whatever they have on hand. I hope I'll be that good one day.

[BlsdMama]

My mom cooked midwest comfort foods - fried meat, always a potato, cover it with gravy, add one can of veggies and one can of fruit and that's supper. :)

 

My dad adores her cooking.

 

My husband can COOK and enjoys it but he loves things with a LOT of flavor - tons of onion, garlic, herbs, spices, you name it. I've learned a lot from trying to cook food he likes.

 

I cooked a LOT growing up and not from choice. I hated cooking then and I HATE it now. We cook, from scratch, three hot meals per day. I despise breakfast, hate lunch (unless it's not cooked) and vehemently hate cooking dinner and all the dishes that come with it.

 

That said, I hate fast food and I won't feed them convenience foods because it isn't healthy. So, we cook to eat and cook to be healthy but I hold NO joy in it.

 

My favorite part of Thanksgiving? It's my daughter's and husband's favorite holiday. All I had to make was the homemade rolls & the gravy.

 

And honestly? It tasted better. :D

 

ETA: And as for sibs, my sister hates anything that ISN'T bland - no onions, no garlic, no pepper, no seasoning, no spices... Loves fast food. My brother will eat whatever is put in front of him and likes to cook game and bake.

 

Our kids? Love to cook. The happy part of that is they cook as often as I let them, but I want them to LIKE cooking which is why I don't have them do it all the time like I had to.

[Peela]

Yes. By the time I was in my teens my mother had become a creative and good cook and excellent hostess. (I do remember very traditional sausages and chops and icecream for dessert type meals from my earlier childhood, but she changed). She learned international recipes- tacos, stirfry, chinese, Indian, even pizza which wasnt a common meal in my earlier childhood- and now she is an amazing, very healthy cook, and they eat lots of vegetables and salads, very healthy bread etc. So yes...I am like her in many ways, in that I am creative and love to try new recipes, international cuisine, and I enjoy entertaining. And...I try and cook healthy meals. I distinctly remember when I was about 13 or 14, mum changing over to wholemeal bread from the white stuff we had grown up on. I think part of teh change for her was that it was about the same time as she and my dad separated- she was growing, learning new things, growing...he just wanted the same old same old and once they were separated, she just went for it.

[OrganicAnn]

I cook like a combination of my mom and dad.

 

My mom is a great cook for basic cooking. You want fried chicken - it is great. You want potato salad - so good.

 

My dad was an experimenter. He was always trying a new recipe. So great and some spectacular flops.

 

I'm somewhere in between these two. I thought for a while i was getting too much like my dad. (yeah I meant to blacken that meat... not)