Increasing my repertoire

I think one of the most important things you can do as a parent is to provide good and nutritious meals for your kids.  Sadly many people don't do this in this day and age of lazy cooking, call for home delivery.  Home cooking is so much better for so many reasons only one being that it is probably healthier.  I think it is so important that your kids see you COOKING and MAKING the food instead of just buying things made.  What kind of message does that give them?  That cooking isnt for everybody. Not everybody can do it, like farming, and it isn't bad if I dont do it.  Wrong.  Cooking is for everybody and everyone should try to provide home meals.  The caliber of cooking doesnt matter.  Meaning, you dont have to be a gourmet cook or a Jamie Oliver, just cook. Make anything.  The kids seeing you make a creation, that is just about worth the whole value no matter what you make. 

Thinking about it from when I was a kid,  I really admire my mother all the more that she put so many meals on our table when I was growing up.  And even my father had some meals he cooked. His spaghetti is still ingrained in my memory as one of the most wonderful dishes.   Unfortunately whenever we asked him for the recipe he would just say, "oh, I put in a pinch of some thyme (he said it thyme pronouncing the th) some oregano, some pepper, salt and some other spices I forget.  Beef, tomatoes and paste etc etc..." and he never told us, he never could tell us, the exact recipe.  

But the point is, is that I remember him making the spaghetti, not just dumping cans or jars of stuff together, but making it from scratch.  Even if it hadn't been good, seeing him make the spaghetti would have been worth the whole meal.  But it WAS delicious.  He didnt order out. He never did.  

I watch the Big Bang theory TV series and I find it rather disgusting that they only eat order out pretty much.  I think they send a terrible message to viewers. It is a turn for the worse we have made.  That a company like Blue Apron could even be a big thing to exist.  Roll your own, as the saying goes.   

But back to my father and his cooking.  The funny thing is, my father was our caretaker for over half a year when our family followed him on sabbatical to Europe but my Mother couldnt go.  For the life of me I am trying to remember what he cooked every day.  All I remember is his fantastic spaghetti sauce completely home made.  He wasnt a griller and one can not survive on spaghetti alone.  What else did he cook in that year?  I have a journal somewhere so I have to go back and look it up.  But I wish I could remember off the top of my head.  I would ask him today (RIP dad), "Dad?  How did you survive that year without Mom? What did you cook and how did you stay sane with us three kids at home being obnoxious kids?"  Well in fact he developed a severe back problem and had to stay in bed for over two months.  And then the question is, what did WE KIDS cook and how did we survive?  

I have added three more meals to my repertoire in the past couple weeks.  I am rather proud of myself.

First of all, i tried the stuffed potatoe skins, but we dont get the same potatoes here that you can get all over the U.S. I guess the Idaho potatoes are the ones for baking because they have the real thick skin and you can get a good meal from the skin.   Here we just have the thin skin potatoes.  Still there is a recipe for making cuts in the potato and sticking stuff inside the cuts.  I tried that and it worked so so.  It needs more work.  

I have to say it was good with the stuffing. You can put anything you want in the cuts.  Like myself I like spaghetti sauce or sauerkraut.  But I think this recipe needs a couple more tries to be perfected.  

I dont like to copy what my wife does, I like to strike out on my own and make the kids meals from my own background but my wife taught me to make chicken kebabs which are pretty easy and tasty.  Just grind up the chicken breast with some garlic cloves and 120ml of cream.  I need more practice on them though because I thought you only had to bake them 20 minutes but it seemed that that was half time and they need at least 40 minutes like most of my meals do.  And furthermore I messed up the baked potatoes.  I still need more practice on them.  Mine were a bit soft on the outside and still needed cooking on the inside.  I didnt get a picture of them though.

What made me happiest was making the pork fried rice.  Pictured here.  I had been yelled at the night before because it had been my responsibility to make supper, but when it came to it, I hadnt planned ahead and messed up and my wife had to do it.  So the next night I planned in advance.  I got all the ingredients before and thought about how long it would take me and when I should start. The thing is, when I cooked it, nobody came to dinner except my youngest daughter. She didnt want to eat it because she had thought I was going to make bbq pork and didnt like the carrots in the mix.  I was really saddened by this.  Nobody came to my dinner.  I used the recipe from the delish.com website. So thanks to them. Here is their recipe

Pork fried rice is great because you can use anything and make lots of substitutes of nearly anything. Any meats or any vegetables. And this is a better meal than pizza who most people think is healthy but when it comes down to it, it isnt and shouldnt be for young kids except once in a while.  The pork fried rice has rice and vegetables and eggs.  Even meat is optional.  Some people might not like the frying bit, but I suppose you could try baking it too.  Needless to say, it is good.  I just hope my whole family comes to dinner the next time I make it.  It really bummed me out that they didnt come.  The above picture taken by my daughter is my own creation.   

Oh well, I ll make it for myself some evening I am home alone.  The point is to be able to cook good stuff for the family or just yourself.  Whether they come or not is their fault.  I will continue to work on expanding my repertoire.  

Al Dimeola has been a jazz guitarist for nearly 50 years. Most notably playing with Return to Forever in the 70s with Chick Corea.  Fusion jazz.  Then he has a fantastic live album with John McLaughlin and Paco on "one night live in San Francisco" which was pretty hot.  I have his cd and lp of his 2020 disk "Across the Universe" (pictured below) covers of 14 Beatles tunes.  I will buy the LP soon myself.  I have it available at Maximum Underground for a good price 2 lp. And CD.   My favorite tunes on it by the Beatles are Dear Prudence and Golden Slumber medley.  Both well done.  Give it a listen.  You can order it from Maximum Underground too if you like.  Write to me or my facebook site Maximum.underground