No one ever expected me to be the first member of my family to own a KitchenAid standmixer.
The odds against my being able to even identify one were slim. Although I was part of my dad's chocolate-chip-cookie assembly line, I rarely spent time in the kitchen. My mother was an excellent cook, though not an adventuresome one. I didn't think I could live up to her standards, let alone summon up enough patience to cut up the ingredients for her spaghetti sauce, which originated with our Polish neighbor next door.
My parents joked that when we girls grew up, they would go to my middle sister's house for turkey and all the trimmings, my younger sister's house for homemade cookies ... and my apartment for a little wine and maybe some peanuts and certainly lots of good books. I laughed with them.
For my 22nd birthday, my friend Laura presented me with "The Official Single Woman's Cookbook," which combined recipes with career-woman humor; for example, the high heels that match your power suit aren't to be used as meat tenderizers.
She wrote inside the front cover: "Take this book and learn. I do not want one of my best friends starving to death once she no longer has the dining halls around to feed her. ... Maybe by next year, you'll be able to bake your own cake."
Everyone laughed at Laura's marvelous joke. So did I, which is why the friends I haven't seen much since college don't know how to react when I tell them that I just whipped up some Provencal Goat Cheese Tartlets, and they were fabulous and I'll be happy to pass on the recipe.
Why such a change? Why, the Food Network.
This is the story of how a former kitchenphobe learned to eat better and had fun doing it.
Eating a nuisance
I was never completely helpless in the kitchen. Thanks to Dad's early training, I could bake cookies, and I often rationalized that Mom's yummy oatmeal cookie recipe worked best for breakfast.
Although I had never bought a cookbook, I had scrawled the directions for an easy chicken entree on a scrap of yellow legal paper. I'd copied it from a friend's aunt's little cookbook, and the few people who ate it liked it.
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Food Network to go AT&T Broadband cable
Good news for food-on-TV lovers.
PG TV editor Rob Owen reported Saturday that subscribers to AT&T Broadband will get access to the Food Network next month. Long carried by other area cable systems and satellite TV, AT&T will add Food to the expanded basic lineup on almost all of its area systems, both in the City of Pittsburgh and its suburbs.
It'll be something to do if the Fourth of July turns rainy, because near-northern suburbs and city customers will get the new lineup July 3. In most communities, Food Network will launch on Channel 49 (moving from Channel 63 in the few areas where it already airs). In nonrebuilt areas, Food will launch on Channel 59.
This makes one fewer reason to move south to Mt. Lebanon, as sportswriter Lori Shontz did -- so she could tune it to Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay.
-- Suzanne Martinson_
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But cooking didn't interest me. For that matter, even eating was a nuisance. I had places to go. People to interview. Stories to write. I didn't have time to do more than boil water for macaroni and cheese or warm up Spaghetti-Os. (The leftovers, by the way, turn a surprising shade of blue if left in the refrigerator for a few weeks. Or months.)
Plus, I was a beginning sports writer, so most of my colleagues were men. Cooking was, well, kind of girly. What kind of image would I project if I spent my free time slaving over a stove? Not one I wanted any of them to see.
Then, one day, channel-surfing in my State College apartment while I waited for athletes to return my phone calls, I happened to land on the Food Network. I stared as some chef chopped a pile of vegetables.
Like all sports writers, I spend a good deal of time watching people move. I had observed linebacker LaVar Arrington surprise the college football world by leaping over the offensive line and figure skater Michelle Kwan skim over the ice so gracefully that she seemed barely to touch it.
This chef, whoever he was, chopped carrots with the same skill. I was mesmerized.
As the days passed, I tuned in regularly.
On "How to Boil Water," I watched chef Cathy Lowe teach a beginning cook -- stand-up comedian Sean Donnellan -- to prepare something called couscous, which I'd never heard of.
I got an introduction to hoisin sauce from Ming-Tsai on his show "East Meets West."
"Hot Off the Grill" host Bobby Flay held me in his grip as he grilled salmon -- a fish I knew only through salmon cakes -- on a cedar plank. Who knew it was possible? Then some guy named Emeril Lagasse bounded across my screen, flinging spices everywhere in an effort to "kick it up a notch."
At first, I tuned in simply for entertainment, the same way I watch college football or NASCAR or "ER." Gradually I got the urge to create my own meals.
One day, I dug out the cookbook Laura gave me and prepared Peanut Pasta Chicken.
Romance of cookware
My life changed.
I obtained kitchen equipment to supplement my handful of plates and mugs. Santa Claus came through with big-kid knives, an All-Clad stir-fry pan and a Cuisinart. My boyfriend gave me the KitchenAid mixer, and my reaction left no doubt that I belong in the class of women who consider kitchen appliances romantic.
Another stunner. Who could have guessed?
A 30th birthday present from my parents was a subscription to Gourmet. (This must have confused the mailman, who was also delivering Winston Cup Scene.) At first I merely read the recipes; then I took the plunge and baked the chocolate brownies the editors deemed "the fudgiest brownies we've ever tried."
My family found them too rich. No problem. More for me.
As a side effect, watching the preparation of so much food demystified the process -- and made eating fun.
Pre-Food Network, I was the picky eater, the girl who had once eaten nothing but McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches on a high school band trip and grew up to rely on pasta with tomato sauce and/or chicken in restaurants.
Now, much to the alarm of my family, I regularly order tuna cooked medium rare -- and I enjoy the rare parts more than the medium ones.
Once, at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, the owner refused to allow my friends and me to order off the menu, saying he would take care of us. I tried -- and loved -- everything, even the stuff I couldn't identify.
After covering the Olympics in Japan, I spent a night at a traditional Japanese inn, a ryokan, and was served a nine-course Japanese dinner. Between my limited Japanese and the innkeepers' limited English, I didn't know what they were placing in front of me. But I tried everything (except the large chunk of fish that stared back at me from a bowl of broth), and I'm glad I did.
Change in lifestyle
Maybe my new approach is the logical consequence of my chosen career. Sports writers are known for never turning down food. In college, a fellow student reporter once ate 11 hot dogs at a Penn State football pregame meal, and his behavior was not considered atypical.
The overweight, poorly dressed sports writer, careening from one free buffet to another, is a common stereotype. It's easy to see why, what with the crazy travel, the late hours, the string of hotel rooms.
I've found, however, that it's possible, with a little effort, to break away from the room-service, fast-food trap.
At the 1998 Women's Final Four in Kansas City, for instance, seven female colleagues and I spent the afternoon before the games eating a delightful lunch in an out-of-the-way bistro. I particularly remember a chocolate cheesecake made with goat cheese that caused me to spend an extra half-hour in the hotel's exercise room.
In the course of the meal, it came out that all eight of us were addicted to the Food Network. We don't consider ourselves good cooks, but we agree that the shows made us wish we were.
Since that bistro meal in Kansas City, I've moved to Mt. Lebanon, an easy decision because it's one of the few areas that carries the Food Network on its cable system.
Some of my road trips are as close to home as the Strip District. I've stocked my shelves with a jar of Emeril's Rustic Rub, a box of couscous and a bottle of hoisin sauce. Last Christmas I bought myself "The Joy of Cooking."
I still come home to discover odd furry creatures in my fridge after road trips, but at least they're more exotic than spent Spaghetti-Os.
A new freedom
Last year, when the Women's Final Four was in Philadelphia, a friend's mother invited 10 of us to her home for brunch. She served homemade cheese crackers with a nip of cayenne pepper, and before we left, three of us asked for the recipe.
At this year's Final Four, in St. Louis, many of the same group went out to dinner, and when I mentioned I had made Liz's mother's crackers, my colleagues were amazed. "That recipe was so difficult, I gave up," one woman said.
Not to brag, but my version of the crackers, which I took to my sister's New Year's Eve party, turned out so well that two people asked for my recipe. Wow. Another first.
Although I'm still not a gourmet cook, and my schedule can keep me away from my KitchenAid and Cuisinart for months at a time, I always return to the kitchen. Friends and family say, "Oh, don't go to the bother of cooking. You're so busy. We'll eat out."
Gradually, they are coming to understand that for me, puttering in the kitchen has become a form not only of enjoyment, but of freedom.
So last week, I dumped the olive oil and stir-fried bell peppers into a concoction of rice wine, dark sesame oil, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce and black bean sauce. Wonder of wonders, both my boyfriend and my dad loved them.
Thank you, Ming-Tsai. And Emeril. Because even though you haven't made that recipe on your show, you still gave me the courage to try it. And enjoy it.
Related Recipes:
Chicken Cappillo
Chocolate Brownies
Cheese Pennies
Thursday, June 07, 2001
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