Mom didn’t really teach any of her children to cook. Not really. Now, that isn’t to say we didn’t learn to cook from mom. But we learned by watching her, especially when we were older and had families of our own. I remember sitting at their breakfast bar when she and Dad lived in Dillon, CO, and watching her cook. But she never said, “Kris, you make this Vegetable Soup with Beef Shanks. I will tell you the ingredients and let you do it while I watch.” Or even when I was a high school girl, “Kris, since I have been at work and on my feet for, I don’t know, 10 or 12 hours, perhaps you could prepare some dinner so I don’t have to do it when I get home.” Didn’t happen.

I am not complaining. First of all, I had no interest in preparing dinner after I got home from school. After all, I had to call my friends and there were LPs to listen to. I might need to go have a Cherry Coke at Tooley’s Drug Store, or go to my BFF’s house and make prank phone calls. Busy, busy, busy.

But as I was thinking about my mom’s grandsons and their love for cooking, I realized that my son Court, though he is a very good cook, certainly didn’t learn to cook from me. At least not in any direct way. Just like Mom, I made dinner every night, but didn’t teach him a darn thing.

I said in yesterday’s post that BJ loved food from the time he was a small boy. Not Court. As a very small boy, his father and I would have to use trickery to get him to eat anything. We called the diced lettuce on tacos “Mexican grass” because he certainly wouldn’t have eaten it if he suspected it was a vegetable. There was a time in way younger years – 3 or 4 – when he practically lived off of hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches. I could make him happy by toasting two pieces of bread, laying a slice of American cheese between them, wrapping the sandwich in a napkin, and putting it in the microwave for 1 minute or so. Voila! Happy camper. Not cooking, however.

At some point, though, (and I really can’t remember when it was) he learned to enjoy food. So parents of small kids who won’t eat much, there’s hope. Things can change. He liked comfort foods such as meat loaf and porcupine meatballs and tacos. In fact, he once ate 13 tacos in one sitting when he was 16 or so.

The year he was turning 13, we happened to be in New York City on his birthday – the first time for Court and me. Bill and I decided to take him to a really nice steak house for his birthday dinner. He announced that he wanted to order lamb chops.

Now, growing up in Nebraska, I didn’t run into lamb chops. Lamb was not on many restaurant menus, which mostly featured steaks. My mom certainly never prepared lamb. I had literally never tasted it, never prepared it, never talked about it, never was curious about it. Yet, Court decided he wanted to try lamb.

“Really?” I asked him. “What if you don’t like it?”

“I will,” he said with certainty. And indeed he did. To this day, it would probably be his favorite meat. He requests it at every opportunity. Most recently I made it for Christmas Eve dinner, and it was fabulous.

And now that he is married and has three children and one on the way, he cooks at least some of the time. Well, I think mostly now he grills. He makes a mean pot of green chili, and grills pork chops that he maintains might – MIGHT – be better than his Poppo’s, and are almost certainly better than his Uncle Dave’s. (His words, not mine.) Now there’s a throwdown challenge for you.

I asked him to share one of his recipes for this post. He said, “I don’t really have recipes; I just mostly eyeball ingredients.” I assure you, he didn’t learn this from me as I am almost entirely unable to cook without a recipe in front of me. I’m pretty sure that means he’s a better cook than I.

Chicken Creole

Ingredients
1 pack boneless chicken thighs, cut into pieces
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
2 jalapenos, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 large can diced tomatoes
½ can tomato paste
Lots of creole seasoning throughout cooking process
Garlic salt, regular salt, pepper to taste

Process
Combine ingredients and cook in crock pot on low for 6-8 hours. Serve with rice.

Anyone care for a grilled porkchop throwdown?

It’s halfway embarrassing (well maybe only one-quarter embarrassing) to think about the role of food in my family’s life. And when I say family, I don’t just mean Bill, me, and our children. I’m talking about my whole extended family.

There would never be a family function that did not include food. Furthermore, it is not an exaggeration to say that when the whole of us are together, we begin discussing our lunch plans at breakfast and our dinner plans at lunch. Furthermore, my grandmother always said, no matter the occasion, be it a celebration or a funeral, “You have to eat a little something.”

It’s become our family mantra.

I began thinking about that recently when one of my nephews proudly posted photos of a pork shoulder he smoked for a birthday party that subsequently was cancelled due to illness. It was an impressive piece of meat (that I will be featuring later this week). What I realized is that my grandmother and grandfather loved food, my mom and dad loved food, my siblings and I love food, and our children love food. Period. End of story.

And our children cook. Or grill. At any rate, they love food and they are responsible for preparing it at least some of the time in their busy lives.

Take my nephew BJ. Jen’s son BJ has always appreciated good food and wine. And I mean from the time he was small. He has worked for many years at a family-owned Italian restaurant in Fort Collins because he appreciates that it is locally-owned and he loves the food and the owner’s cooking philosophy. He would tell you he learned much about cooking from Clyde Canino.

But I purport that he learned much about grilling from my dad – his Poppo.

Poppo was a master griller. I don’t remember my life without a grill in it. Nearly every night in the summer when I grew up, Dad would fire up the grill (and I’m talking the charcoal kind) and cook his butter-basted chicken with lemon juice or his delicious steaks.

The grandkids especially remember his pork chops – skinny little chops sprinkled in salt and pepper. Dad would always keep a can of beer nearby to douse the coals as they flared up. So the chops (or chicken, or steaks) were basically all basted in beer. It was delicious. Our sons remember the can of beer, and I would venture to say every one of them uses beer to cool an overly-hot grill.

Taking a cue from his Poppo, BJ grills nearly every night – even in the winter. Rain or shine. Warm or cold. Company or not.

He says often what he chooses to grill is a pork chop. I haven’t confirmed this with him, but my guess is that pork chops are cheap and it’s easy to buy one chop and cook it for oneself. He might marinate it. He might simply grill it with salt and pepper or Monterey seasoning. He often tops his meat with bleu cheese. He almost always serves it with grilled vegetables on the side. Sometimes he cooks a potato in his toaster oven. I LOVE the fact that he cooks for himself.

So I asked him for one of his recipes. No written-down recipes, Aunt! But here’s what he told me:

Poor Man’s Pork Chop
I found pork chops on Manager’s Special at King Soopers – two for $6. I marinated one of the chops in a little olive oil sprinkled on top with Monterey seasoning for about 10 minutes. It was minus 4 degrees outside, so I cooked the pork chop on my grill pan indoors. I grilled a red onion that I had sliced up, and then placed the chop on top to cook. I cooked the onion until it was blackened because I think that blackened red onion tastes like onion straws. When the chop was cooked through, I put some blue cheese crumbles that I had in my refrigerator on top, covered it and let it melt.

I used what I had on hand, and it was delicious. I still have one chop left for next week.

Honestly, his Poppo would be very proud.