Grandpa Bob & Spaghetti

What Was The First Meal You Ever Cooked Successfully?

Believe it or not, I was a pudgy child - food was an important part of every extended family gathering. And family dinners were a big deal. Even during the roughest parts of my parents' lives, we still ate dinner together every night.

Both of my Grandmothers cooked, baked, and canned the produce from their gardens and orchards. I remember the chicken and dumplings my Mammaw Leadingham cooked for supper (lunch) every Sunday  for extended family after church - services usually went until 1 or 2 depending on how long the preacher could keep going. But my favorite was the fresh green beans cooked in bacon fat.  Soooo good, but just thinking about it now makes my arteries shudder. 

Mammaw & Pappaw Clark put up most of their own food - even raised cattle which made for some fine steaks cooked over the grill near the garage.  I can't remember a store-bought vegetable in the house.  I used to wake up on canning mornings to warm applesauce  -- who knows how early Mammaw must have gotten up to begin preserving the apples so that we could eat applesauce for breakfast.

And Mom used to cook  even when she worked full-time. As we got older, she would freeze casseroles or other dinners which I could pop into the oven or warm on the stove-top so that dinner would be ready when she got home from work. We ate a lot of lasagna and tuna or chicken casseroles. And frozen peas were the go to vegetable and in the summer it was corn on the cob. 

We also ate spaghetti. Lots of spaghetti. The first meal I ever made on my own was spaghetti, bread, peas and a salad. I was probably 13 or 14 and remember Dad - Grandpa Bob - sitting in his wheelchair at the dining room table telling me each step:

1. cook the beef with onions, add the tomato sauce
2. while the sauce cooked, wash the head of lettuce and cut up the cucumbers and tomatoes
3. set the table
4. boil water to cook the pasta and another smaller pot to cook the peas
5. pop the bread in the oven,
6. and always "clean up as you go."

It's funny, I had to think a bit about which meal was the first because I could bake cookies and bread - my Step-Mom even taught me how to fry donuts - by the time I was 11 or 12. So moving into making a full meal was a natural progression of skills rather than a big deal. But remembering Dad at the dining table giving directions for this meal is such a clear, sweet memory - he was joking and laughing the whole time.