Phyllis’ Blog

I was so blithely out of touch with what it means to cook every day that I hadn’t considered that I was probably a failure before I started.

Two weeks after Merle and I got married, we moved into our one-room student “apartment” in New York City.

I was even too naïve to calculate my good fortune. I would be an under-graduate at New York University. (Of course I would; I hadn’t even considered anything else!) Merle was starting a three-year program at Union Theological Seminary. Only after we had met the other 11 couples on our married-students dorm floor did I discover that I was one of two women who were students. The other nine women were working their husbands through school.

Not only had Merle stated clearly that if he had the privilege of studying, I should, too, he had also suggested that we divvy up the household chores. Sounded perfect to me.

I was under-domesticated, and it wasn’t my mother’s fault. She saw to it that I learned to iron and dust, shell peas and silk corn. But I had no interest in cooking despite her valiant efforts. When my younger brother showed enthusiasm for what went on in pans that were too high for him to see into, she and my dad bought him a stool so he could watch and stir. Clearly, he was a far better student than I, and once again, I escaped with a book to the far end of the house.

Merle, on the other hand, had an extraordinary tutorship in cooking, baking, and cleaning. One of seven boys (with no sisters) in a traditional farm family, he took a four-year turn as his mother’s chief helper, beginning when he was in late elementary school. He found cleaning chores much more satisfying than working in the kitchen. And kitchen duty seemed to carry more stigma for a competitive, tractor-driving male in those days, than wielding a sweeper or washing windows did.

So when Merle volunteered to keep our apartment clean, I was happy. I hated clutter, but dusting and vacuuming seemed nearly pointless to me, so short-lived was their effect.

With barely a thought I said, “I’ll cook.” What was I thinking? I often wonder. Both of our mothers were extraordinarily good cooks. We ate well every single day of our childhoods. And how often had I heard Merle talk about the five-course Italian meals he had eaten on a student ship to Europe after his sophomore year of college? This guy loved food. He noticed what he ate. He liked to experiment; he wasn’t scared off when offered new dishes.

One day, a couple of weeks before our wedding, my mother desperately asked me to sit down at the kitchen table with her. She had her recipe box and a stack of blank recipe cards sitting there. And so I dutifully went through the stash with her, copying recipes for those dishes I especially enjoyed eating. But I don’t remember asking her any questions about how to actually make the food.

In fact, the only cooking memory I have, before that first meal I made for Merle and me, was trying an occasional recipe from Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls, probably when I was about eight. (”Eggs in a Frame” stands out even now!) And, shameful to admit, my memories otherwise are from even earlier—when I made some pre-packaged cookies with a mini-toy baking set which I got for Christmas before I could read.

I’ve learned since that Merle was more alert to the uncertainty that hung over our daily meal-making than I was. Apparently, my college roommate was thinking about it, too. She gave us a basic cookbook for a wedding gift, as did a close friend of my parents.’ (Might Ma have been speaking her fears to her?)

Good thing. I can still bring back the panic I felt when I sat down to make our first grocery list. I brought out the three cookbooks (Ma had also sent along one of Grandma’s favorites) and the box of recipe cards.

I had to make a few phone calls to my sister-in-law in the Bronx since the cookbooks presumed that you had a little bit of cooking knowledge. Well, I clearly didn’t since I had to ask Lois how you got chicken broth from a chicken. (I was too embarrassed to call Ma to find out, or to check with Merle, whom I’m sure knew how.)

Our first meal? “Spam and Shells” from the recipe card box. Our first meal for guests? “Tuna Noodle Casserole” served to Merle’s next older brother and his wife. Trouble was, I hadn’t thought about preparing all the ingredients ahead of time so that I’d only need to bake the dish during our visit. So I struggled through all the onion- and celery-chopping in full view of our guests.

Once I started figuring out some basic techniques, and also how to sense whether we might like a particular recipe, I started experimenting. Well, okay, every dish was an experiment since it was always my first time out. But Merle was a willing compatriot, always gamely trying what I decided to fix. I remember only one big misfire in those early weeks. When he asked what I was making, I must have said “Spaghetti.” When I brought Spaghetti and Clams in a White Sauce to the table, it was such a diversion from the Spaghetti with Beef in a Red Sauce that he was expecting and already savoring, that he could hardly get over his disappointment!

Cookbooks became my daily mealtime savior. But I really loved only those that told me every single thing to do. If they left out a step, thinking it too obvious to state, I didn’t even know until a mishandled dish appeared at the end. Or I’d get throttled along the way and have to ask some other soul in our gang kitchen, or make a panic call to Lois.

With some experience, and Merle’s honest enjoyment of stuff I tried, I started to look forward to cooking as a welcome relief to studying and all the reading my courses required. I loved the diversion. And I was falling in love with good, clear cookbooks.