Day #19

Today I am thankful for the cooking and eating of food!  I am thankful that so many of my fond family memories are centered around food and fellowship.  I grew up surrounded by women (and a few men) who loved to cook and knew how to very well.  I was always in the kitchen helping when I could, working in the garden after school (which was actually more like punishment at the time), canning vegetables, watching my Granny made apple butter and strawberry jam and helping her snap beans ALL summer long.  When I would stay with my father on the weekends he would cook these huge breakfast meals, that seemed to take hours to cook before we could sit down and eat.  He always took me out to dinner for my birthday, and that was always a treat!  My mom, Aunt, and Granny always cooked huge, wonderful meals.
I have always loved to cook, to watch these women cook, to learn how to make food taste extra good when you cooked it.  We didn't have cable growing up but I loved watching Yan Can Cook and Cookin' Cheap on PBS.  I love Asian cuisine and loved that Yan would always end his show with "If Yan can cook, so can You!!"  Makes me giggle just thinking about it.
When I was in high school we attended college day at Radford University and it had all the packets of info about all the different colleges and I saw one for a culinary institute in Baltimore.  I was shocked!  You could go to college for that!  I thought to myself how easy and fun would that be, I already know how to cook! I applied and was accepted into that school.  But I never went.  Fell in love with a boy or something like that.
In more recent years, I spent my evening meals and holidays with my husbands Grandmother.  Living with her for a while, I helped with the evening meals, which were usually four courses and some of the best home cooking there was.  I helped her with every holiday meal, she taught me how to set a formal dinner table, and how to make the best chicken and dumplings & bread pudding known to man.  This time of year is especially hard for me, missing her and the all the preparation that we did for the family for the holidays. 
I have had Brody on the counter tops beside me cooking since he hold himself up.  I've taught him how to measure for recipes and crack eggs without getting in shells, he loves to help me cook.  Sometimes I will pretend like I am on a cooking show, while I explain everything that I am doing in detail to him.  I am thankful for all the time in my life spent in the kitchen, with the people I love, cooking delicious, loving meals for my family, with family, through the generations of my family.