SubscribeMe & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
Lesson 2:
If eyes could injure and if knives had any life at all, my daughter would have easily wounded the one I asked her to use for our lesson on chopping. I had to convince her that she wouldn’t chop off her fingers if she held the knife firmly and slowly cut the onions. So I put my hand over hers, showing her how to grip the handle and then hold the onion in place with her other hand. I’m a lefty-my daughter isn’t- so it took every ounce of my concentration to use my right hand to pass on a bit of knife confidence.
Our eyes watered, and my daughter wanted to stop. But she finished slicing and chopping the onion and then moved to a much smaller piece of garlic. I’m not going to show her anytime soon how to use our onion chopper. For now, she has to become friends with the knives.
We worked on some of the basics in this week’s cooking class — knife handling and seasonings. I’m on a one-year journey to teach my 15-year-old how to cook, with my nearly 80-year-old mother, aunts and Martha Stewart as guides. I’m not exactly a gifted cook so I expect to learn some things too.
It was a coincidence that my daughter’s Girl Scouts troop recently participated in a Thinking Day event, in which each troop wore costumes representing a country they had studied and served food samples representative of their area. So my daughter sampled foods from around the world. It was an excellent segue into a discussion about herbs and spices, particularly since other countries tend to use a greater variety than we do in traditional American food.
We lingered at the produce section at the grocery store, checking out the fresh herbs and stopped at the aisle with ethnic foods so we could examine the small bags of seasonings. My daughter easily recognized cilantro, rosemary and basil and was surprised to learn that there are several types of salt. At home, we talked a lot about salt, its impact on our health and how we’re going to reduce how much of it we add to our food.
We turned to “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook for pictures of the herbs and seasonings and details on what complements different foods. First tip: For optimum freshness, buy whole spices and grind or grate as needed. And, replace the spices at least every two years.
Of course, there are plenty of seasoning blends for sale in grocery stores. One of our favorites is the salt-free Mrs. Dash, particularly the garlic and herb blend. I usually sprinkle a bit of sea salt on foods before adding Mrs. Dash. Now, we’re going to use it solo.
This week’s cooking lessons:
It’s going to be a long time before I leave my daughter in the kitchen alone when she’s using a knife.
I need to clean out the spice cabinet. I know I have spices that are more than two years old. What about you?
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I am a member of the Sandwich Generation, a Baby Boomer raising a teenage daughter and dealing with the needs of an aging mother. I am a veteran journalist, having worked for more than three decades as a reporter and editor. Mostly recently, I was an editor with the Metro section of The Washington Post.
