how it all started…
The only cookbook that I’ve ever really worked all the way through, was my very first one: Sweet Treats - Kids in the Kitchen by Williams Sonoma. I still remember that awful excitement I felt to own one of those thick hardcover books for the very first time. I would spend hours at a time brushing my fingers over those stunning and glossy pictures on every page. Every time I buy a cookbook, nowadays, or even get to just touch one, that feeling comes barreling back.
Unfortunately, Sweet Treats is actually no longer being printed, but it’s still available secondhand on Amazon for 6 bucks, which is truly the best deal I’ve ever heard of, especially now that cookbooks cost upwards of 30 dollars.
But, yes, the first and only cookbook I’ve ever cooked my way through was in the first grade. The strawberry shortcakes, arguably the best recipe in the book, are where it all truly began. Every couple of weeks, my mother and I would bake something together to bring to my first-grade teacher, Ms. Bailey. To this day, she still sends us Christmas cards.
Not surprisingly, my origin story begins with my mother, like all good ones do. My mother was the one that bought me that very first cookbook. She, loving me and my brother to the absolute, has always put all her energy into investing in every little thing we ever showed the slightest interest in. The 6-dollar investment in Sweet Treats catapulted a string of other investments that I know she could have never anticipated.
Quickly after that first book, I moved on to easy bake ovens, to Cuisinart ice cream makers, all the way to the frighteningly expensive KitchenAid stand mixers. My mother gave me everything she could to hone my fascination in the kitchen.
Many cooks and bakers have touching and heartfelt stories of how they first learned their craft from their very own mothers. I, too, have touching and heartfelt stories, but not of learning the skills from my mother. My mother was a home cook, but not an avid one at that. She cooked our meals daily, but only occasionally cooked for her own pleasure and enjoyment. And no doubt, she was not a baker of any kind, avid or amateur.
I do not have tales of learning to cook from my mother, much less cooking food from her faraway home of Taiwan. My stories are more about how my mother and I learned to cook together and learned to love the kitchen in tandem. In those years, we combed through recipes online and thumbed through countless glossy pages for our next adventure.
Those were truly the days, a time when I didn’t have to wash my own dishes or really clean the syrupy messes I had made because I was a child, barely tall enough to look over the sink.
My mother actually ended up donating that cookbook a couple of years ago because of her habit of donating things she thinks we don’t use or care for anymore. Sweet Treats is dearly missed, but truly does not come even close to my most prized possession: a mother who bothered so much to spend that time with me, baking sweet treats, she herself didn’t care for. Nowadays, I spend more time cooking her favorites for her than cooking with her, to give back for that precious time and care she gave me all those years ago.
