I am home in Los Angeles for some meetings and a little early Thanksgiving with my family. I grew up in this town and the four generations before me grew up in Santa Barbara barely two hours north of here.
This is the house my parents bought the year before I was born, so I'm lucky to return to the stability of walls that held me as a child. The one room that is gone, though, is the kitchen. When I was about eight years old, my mom and her team of worker bees took an axe to the original kitchen — small, chopped up into kitchen, breakfast nook, washroom and dining room — and built the room that now serves as the larger, brighter hearth of the home.
Arguably it is warmer and more comfortable, certainly for cooking. But that little girl in the photo above didn't need much space to learn to cook, nor did the generations of cooks before her. With her rear perched on the scratched Mexican tile counter, she learned how to mix and chop and fall in love with kitchen chemistry.
When I come home to my mother's kitchen, we cook a lot. I also get to request those comforting, childhood dishes that only an elder can replicate. Now, as a mother, coming home means sharing those taste memories with my own daughter, and thus the generational links begin forming their chain.
Yesterday we invited the neighborhood over for a Lantern Walk. Last year I wrote about this event (and the Cheddar and Leek Muffins we brought) held annually at my daughter's school, where children march around a community garden holding glass jars with lit candles inside, and afterwards huddle together in the chilly November dusk to share some snacks. Because we are in California, we missed this year's Lantern Walk so we recreated it in the park across the street from Mom's house.
Mom made mac'n'cheese with frizzled pieces of prosciutto and thyme and a fall fruit salad for the children. Ursula chopped persimmons with the blade of a pastry scraper.
After the procession through the park, we returned to the house and lit the dining table's runner with the children's lanterns. I sat back and took in the energy of a dining room table filled as it's never been with small people, and felt thankful, days before turkey and stuffing, for the memories I have of this place and how they live on, long after the tile is smashed and replaced.
Where did you learn to cook? I'm collecting photographs of people in their childhood kitchens to use in a future piece. Please click here and send me yours. Please put "childhood kitchen" in the subject line, otherwise I will not receive your submission. By submitting your photograph you are granting us permission to use the photo in a piece to be published on TheKitchn.com
(Images: Karen Gillingham and Sara Kate Gilingham-Ryan)
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Sadly, I have no photos of learning to cook. But I just wanted to say how lovely that photo of you is with that wonderful old Pyrex mixing bowl! These moments are the ones that REALLY matter.
I echo the comment above. But I can relate to your article, but it was my Grandmother's kitchen. Loved that kitchen even tho the countertops were very narrow. A lot of wonderful baked goods and love came out of that kitchen!
That's fantastic. We had the same mixing bowls, in avocado green.
I have vivid memories of cooking with my mother in her kitchen, and my grandmother in hers, imperfect kitchens though they were. I need to remember this as we are looking for a new home - it's not the kitchen or the countertops, it's the love and relationship that are special.
I think I said this before, but I learned/ got a passion to cook from my grandma we lived with. She was wheelchair bound and pushed little me to want to try all sorts of cooking. She couldn't get into the kitchen, but would watch from the living room across the counter and instruct me what to do next. It was such a feeling of accomplishment to make something with her talking me through.
I'll never forget her teaching me how to use an electric can opener. After we opened easily 20-30 cans of vegetables from the pantry I got it down and she was just grinning ear to ear at how proud I was...then tried to figure out what to do with 30 open cans of tomatoes!
these stories speak to me so much. My mom taught me how to cook and bake. She was very ill most of my childhood and couldn't participate in things out of the house so much of our life centred around the kitchen table. I remember her teaching me how to break eggs or fold in eggwhites, all the different tricks of measurement. She even taught me how to make homemade marshmallows! We had a cookbook called the American Womens Cookbook which we used for everything - as I remember it was very tattered and worn. When she died that was the only thing I wanted and it was missing. Years later I found a copy in perfect shape in a used book store and cherish it ( and use the recipes) I am now making recipe boxes for my 2 children (15 and 19 ) and every year for about the last 10 years I give them hand written family recipe cards as Christmas gifts.
I learned to cook in the tiny galley kitchen in our apartment in Yonkers. Both my parents are very good cooks but it is more my father who was inclusive in the kitchen. He was off on Mondays so he always cooked that day. I remember a recipe from a McCalls magazine in the mid 70s that he made many times. It involved mincing a dill pickle and reducing heavy cream to make a sauce for boneless chicken breasts. I would get sent to the deli in my school uniform to pick up the pickle and then tasked with stirring the cream until it reduced. The kitchen, although still tiny, was recently renovated and Brian and I went over to their house and cooked fish and chips for my parents last weekend. We made a mess (and cleaned it up) and had a ball. And it was really nice to see my Dad and my man in the kitchen cooking together.
My Mom has the same set of pyrex bowls! I too am fortunate that my parents still live in my childhood home (their LA home of 54 years!). One of the things I have asked my Mom for is that set of pyrex bowls. While pink is not my style, they bring back incredible memories of cooking in my parents' kitchen.
I love this - thank you for sharing your memories! I grabbed my baby book when I read your call for photos, but there are only photos of me eating in there, not cooking! All the cooking photos must be in other family scrapbooks on my parents' bookshelves, not on mine.
@Mama Me Gluten Free,
Send those anyway. Anything with your childhood kitchen.
How about my daughter in our current kitchen (which will be her childhood kitchen) making pie crust with her grandma (my mom)? Too recent?
I stood on a chair beside my granny while she made her daily biscuits. She gave me a handful of dough to knead, shape and sugar and cinnamon to add for my own special biscuit. Now when I pour flour into a bowl and make the dough by feel, just like she did, I imagine her watching me.
That's awesome. I have that exact pink bowl sitting on my desk here at work this very second. I just had a salad in it. I hope to have a child someday who will want to help me cook in the kitchen with that very bowl. What a precious photo. Thank you for sharing.
I hated cooking when I was growing up, although I liked to watch other people cook and I think that is how I learned. Dad was a chef, so when I did cook I always felt it was under his exacting gaze - never quite good enough.
Of course when I got married my journey of culinary discovery began and I've learned a lot by watching and analysing the results of the dishes I prepare and cook. What worked, what didn't. I find it interesting that this observation and analysis is a skill I have developed but is completely lacking in my husband. He likes to be told and taught. Something quite frustrating for me.
Thank you for sharing such lovely memories of your intro to the cooking world through the warmth of our home place. May your wee one day share the same.
I never realized your a native Angeleno! Enjoy your time at home -- I'm sure your neighborhood loved the lantern walk.
Lovely story! I think I started by observing my parents when they were cooking, then hovering for bits of chopped apple or left over dough followed peeling/chopping then slowly taking part in rolling nems/spring rolls on the kitchen table. Even when my help wasn't needed, I loved to be in the kitchen with my parents and chat about the day and sniff dinner at the various stages of cooking.
We've already started a list of the dishes we want to make for each other when I'm home for Christmas.
Sara Kate - when's the deadline for submitting photos? I've plenty at my parents' but won't get there until late December unfortunately!
AdelineA, I will probably use them prior to late December, but I'd still be happy to see your photo and maybe we'd do an update. Send what you can when you can.
cheers!
@aida mollenkamp
Yep! I can't believe we never talked about that!
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I learned to cook in a dive bar ... No, really! My grandpa opened a pizza place/bar in 1960 and my dad was running the place when I was a kid. The bar was closed on Sundays, which happened to be my day with my dad. Every Sunday we made pizzas together for my other siblings. When I was in high school, I worked there on Saturdays and learned how to make my grandma's famous meatballs. I'll try to find a picture!
I'm flying home tomorrow for an entire week of cooking, eating and drinking with my mom and I'm so excited I don't even care that I work until 10 pm tonight, have to be at the airport at 6 am and haven't even packed!!