I wasn't much interested in cooking when I was growing up, probably because my mom didn't enjoy it and she had little patience for teaching me how to do it. So I didn't watch Julia or Jacques, nor did I have Italian or Greek grandmas around. Neither of my grandmothers cooked well, and one lived in another state, so we rarely saw her. DH actually encouraged me to learn to cook; his mom was a good cook and worked at a butcher shop for a time, so she taught him and he taught me how to break down a chicken.
After we had been married about five years, I attended a workshop at a local horticulture center on cooking with fresh herbs. It was a revelation [emoji38] I had DH put window boxes on the outside of our third-floor apartment fire escape and grew herbs in them. I expanded it by a lot when we bought our house.
Then I discovered Penzeys Spices while visiting my brother and his wife in Oak Park, IL, and Cooks Illustrated magazine not long afterward. I've been a subscriber for close to 20 years and I've learned a lot about the science of cooking and baking from that.
Y'all will get a kick out of this
In 2002, I had major surgery, was home for six weeks of recovery, and discovered The Food Network - in particular, Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals and Ina Garten. While she's not a chef - and never claims to be - Rachael's show was great for someone new to cooking. She uses mostly fresh ingredients (except canned tomatoes) and has a lot of tips and shortcuts for preparing ingredients and setting up mise en place.
Ina is similar in that she's not a trained chef, but she has *so* much experience, I learned a lot from her, especially about baking. I also learned a lot from Bobby Flay and Rick Bayless - I won a Bayless cookbook years ago and loved it.
While Bobby may have some arrogance about him, he's undeniably a knowledgeable and creative chef who has several successful restaurants as well as FN shows. I like that two of his shows are designed to showcase other chefs and their foodways and skills - Bobby Flay's Showdown and Beat Bobby Flay.
One thing I learned from Rachael is that you can take a basic set of ingredients and, by using different seasonings and cooking methods, you can turn them into all kinds of dishes. Onions, garlic, bell and/or hot peppers and/or celery with chicken, pork, beef or fish/shellfish can become fajitas, Thai curry, Chinese stir-fry, jambalaya, Indian curry, Italian chicken cacciatore, different types of stew, etc.
Now, I have a bunch of cookbooks for different cuisines and I follow a few blogs, like Serious Eats, to get ideas and learn about dishes I haven't heard of before. Sometimes I follow a recipe; sometimes I use one or more and combine what I want from them. So I get inspiration from all sorts of places, including from many people here [emoji2]
