Carol Kanter

Engaged at 22, my education had not prepared me to “keep house.”  I asked a similarly “educated” friend in Chicago, married the year before, what she did about, say, dusting.  “Oh,” she explained, “I just open the front and back doors and let the wind take care of it.”

But I knew cooking would be another matter.  And I’d never contemplated doing that, either.

Once, in my teens, a friend had asked me to make him a grilled cheese sandwich.  I hadn’t a clue, but how hard could that be?   I tried.  None too successfully.  I remember Rick’s look of utter disbelief.  Or maybe it was horror.

My father’s mother always turned out fabulous Sunday suppers. But on my mom’s side, I come from a line of challenged cooks.  Grandma Mary had made money buying and selling real estate in the very early 1900s, but the only foods I recall coming out of her kitchen were kasha and roasted chicken, very roasted.   And Mom admitted she had tried to make coffee as a new bride, without adding water to the pot.

But Mom’s best friend rescued me with Thoughts for Buffets as an engagement gift.  And better even than the book itself was her assertion, “You can make any recipe here for the first time for company.”  I could follow directions.

Years later, I ran into the guy who had had the only other “A” in our Quantitative Analysis chemistry class.   A lawyer now, he said he never used what we’d learned in Quant.  “And you?” he asked. 

“Yes, I use it almost daily,” I said. “‘Cause, boy, can I cook.”