I will admit, I am a hardcore foodie! I LOVE food! I love grocery shopping, meal-planning (though that gets to be a drag at times), and I love to cook. I actually don’t like to bake that much (my poor, un-homemade-cookied kids) but I adore cooking. I always have. I spend hours going through cookbooks, browsing online for new recipes, figuring out what would be good and what would be horrible. My entry into cooking meats, fish and poultry was only about 15 years ago as I was vegetarian until I was 16-17. But I’ve cooked since I was 4 or so. Seriously. My father could cook and cook well and he taught me, my mother burned water. She could bake though, I cannot.
So last night, Andrew and I were watching a program from the UK called Jamie’s Ministry of Food. Now, I know some people really dislike Jamie Oliver and think he’s a jerk. But I like that his recipes are fresh, simple and above all, actually good 
And the fact he’s big on organic foods and sustainable farming appeals to me. I’ve been a fan since he hit the airwaves. Of course I don’t follow his recipes word for word, but I don’t follow anyone’s recipes that way either. The basis of the show was that British people are heading down a path to obesity and that a lot of it could be due to the fact that people just aren’t cooking anymore. That the skill of cooking and creating food for your family isn’t being handed down and taught the way it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. All of the people he had at the start of the program either had NEVER cooked before or just didn’t know how. Didn’t know what boiling water was supposed to look like. One mom had two kids, 5 and 2 and they had NEVER had a home-cooked meal before. We were stunned! Never! They always got takeout or ate out or had chips or instant foods.
The first meal he taught her to make was pancakes from scratch. A mug of self-raising flour, a mug of milk, 1 egg and a pinch of salt. That simple. She cried the first time she made it AND her kids ate it. Pancakes. We couldn’t believe it. And the more we thought about it, the more we got the point. If how to make pancakes or spaghetti (another basic dish he taught them) or bread or a roasted chicken and so on isn’t taught or handed down, how else are people going to learn or get the motivation to learn? Maybe that’s it. No motivation to learn, no interest that’s been sparked yet. Because I’ll tell you as the show went on, he had trouble keeping their enthusiasm up. He wanted each of his original 8 people to teach the 10 dishes he taught them, to two people. Who would each teach it to two people. It took weeks to get them to be willing to pass it down. And some left the program because they didn’t have time to pass it down. But the ones with that spark Oh, it was fun to watch them come alive and pick up a pan. One guy was a middle-aged miner. Had never cooked a day in his life. Jamie taught him this chicken, proscutto and cheese dish. The guy was so excited about this dish and the fact that not only did he cook it, it was good! Jamie went to his house later on in the show and the guy’s wife said he’s cooking 5 days a week now! It was amazing to see that spark and see him light up about it.
So maybe coming from where I’m coming from I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. We do have some food restrictions with a couple of the kids but it doesn’t limit the foods we make. We just adjust or have something for them that’s “safe”. And we open the kitchen up to them with open arms. And they all love to cook or to help out when we’re cooking. I have no doubt that I could leave a recipe in the kitchen for the big kids and come back and have a meal I’d be proud to eat, waiting for me. In fact, most of the pancakes, waffles, cupcakes, muffins, lunch meals and so on aren’t even prepared by me anymore. I’ll pull trays out of the oven, put them in, flip the bacon and so on, but the main hands on preparation isn’t done by me any longer. And I can’t think of the last time I made waffles or pancakes. Azura and Brandon do. And I have no doubt their children will as well. And their children. And so on. And hopefully by passing it down, the line of foodies will continue
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