Exchange students in Italy set fire by cooking pasta without water
March 21 (UPI) -- A group of American exchange students in Italy caused a fire after attempting to cook pasta without water.
The three 20-year-old women purchased a package of pasta from a store while studying in Italy and placed it directly in the pot before lighting the stove, causing the pasta to burst in flames within minutes.
"We put the pasta on the fire without the water, we thought it was cooked like that," the students said.
Firefighters arrived at the scene to extinguish the blaze and told the exchange students they also weren't aware that boiling water was required to cook pasta.
Florentine chef Fabio Picchi sought to right the issue by offering the women four hours of Italian cooking lessons in one of his restaurants.
"They will have lunch in our restaurant with two of my extraordinary cooks," Picchi said. "They will teach them the simple basics that are very good if done well. I think this can be useful to them, but also to us. Understanding is what is beautiful and necessary."
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They also made meatballs without cooking the meat.
Oh dear God, the lack of common sense in our children today is astounding. I guess it was 'Well, when mom gave us pasketti it was soft and warm, so we thought this is how it happened.......have to wonder if they would think to wash off the veggies before making the sauce.......
You have to wonder if this wasn't a prank, but then burning your apartment down would be a pretty extreme prank.
Just a little......not sure what burned pasta smells like (as I've never tried frying it) but I'm sure that smell will hang around a bit.
Oh yeah. When I was in my 20s, I came home from the bar one Friday night and put a pot of leftover spaghetti on the stove to heat up, turned the tv on and promptly passed out on the couch. Seems like it took weeks to get rid of that smell.
Yet more evidence of Hillary's corruption!
She definitely has too much power-- many of us (especially here on NT) are wondering how long it will be until she is impeached-- and finally removed from office!!!
"We put the pasta on the fire without the water, we thought it was cooked like that," the students said.
There are several bizarre elementns to this story.
One of the things that surprizes me (in addition to the more obvious) is that these are Americans. It strikes me as a bit strange that apparently the first time they ever cooked pasta was when they went to Italy-- had they never in their entire lives cooked pasta before?
UPI is not a joke site, so I guess it really happened.
Actually doesn't surprise me much Krish, and it's not just because of the present generation of young idiots either.
About 40 years ago a group of six young people joined the Peace Corps and were sent to a rural African village. After settling in, they decided to refresh themselves by taking a swim in the river. When they were warned by the villagers that there were Crocodiles in that river, their response was, "That's all right, we're Americans". Two of them didn't come back. The rest learned the hard way. Apparently the Crocs didn't check passports to find out who it was permissible to eat.
Good grief! That would almost be funny-- except its not funny!
Sounds like part opf a bad stand up comedy routine:
We're having Meatballs and Spaghetti for lunch today.
OK, well in that case make sure to take your umbrella to work.
??????
You've obviously never tried refried pasta. Crunchy but delicious!
In fairness, I once unwittingly cooked a frozen pizza with the cardboard stuck to the bottom. Yum!
I hate to admit it but I have done that too. SIGH!
I accidentally roasted a turkey with the giblets bag still in it.
Have you done fried macaroni n' cheese? You have to have real butter otherwise it will taste like crap. I prefer the Blue Box made the day before, but any will do.
Melt your butter, dump in your day old mnc, sprinkle with flour, and fry til done to taste. I like mine a little brown.
When making whip cream from heavy cream, I over-beat it and made butter.
Oh my.....I am so glad to know that I am not the only one who has done that. I didn't realize I had forgotten to remove it until I went to make the Giblet gravy and couldn't remember where I put the Giblets.
The it suddenly dawned on me .......
We still ate the turkey
Then not a total loss, right?
No, but I couldn't very well put it on the pie I had made so off to the store and had to get more.
I always assumed they stuffed the bag in there so it would cook properly....
Actually I kind of think that Mac and Cheese tastes like crap no matter what you do to it. That's probably just me though, my grandkids seem to like it. My taste buds got spoiled for the stuff when my mother made it almost every day for a number of years when I was in school. It was quick and easy to make for lunches.
I think all of us have at one time or another. I found that it makes the crust much moister. It can even keep the crust from burning.
I like Mac and Cheese but only if it's cooked right, I only cook the pasta long enough so it's not hard if you cook it till it bloats up it tastes like shit.
LOL. You rekindled a memory of my first living alone when going to school and I put a TV dinner into a toaster oven without removing the packaging.
Yeah, we did too, but, there was no Giblet gravy that time. The Giblets just didn't taste that good after being inside the bag and the turkey. They tasted kind of rank.
But, the turkey itself tasted fine. However, my Mother never let me live it down. Every year she would call and remind me to take out the Giblet bag before baking the Turkey. (big grin)
I've done that too.
Actually before that happened I never believed that whipping cream would turn it into butter-- I though that that sounded like a hoax-- it was impossible!
(But now I know!
you did not....
Yeah, I thought the same thing. They are mature enough to live on their own in a foreign country, and mature enough to go to the store and facilitate an exchange of money for food....in a language foreign to them, no less. They knew that the pasta goes into a pot. They knew that heat was involved somehow. But suddenly they become dumb-asses regarding the water?
In any event, my problem was that it didn't make sense that dry pasta would burst into flames, especially in a couple of minutes. Soooooo, I decided to try it myself. I put about a 5th of a package of dry angel-hair pasta into a pot, and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. I decided to make some brownies. Then I waited some more. I then cleaned out the crisper drawers in the fridge, and still waited. Of course I was becoming more giddy by the moment with the success of my experiment. I just knew that dry pasta could not burst into flames. Then I decided to actually turn on the burner under the pot that contained the dry pasta.
After turning on the burner, I went to my Dad's room to check on him. When I came out about 60 seconds later and walked toward the kitchen, I began to smell smoke. That's when I started running. The smoke was so thick in the kitchen, that I could hardly see in front of me. No flames yet, thank goodness. But had there been a little more pasta and another 45 seconds, I have no doubt that flames would have been imminent.
And worth a mention: I once opened my back door to let the dogs out, and was immediately sprayed by a skunk. (No wonder the dogs were going nuts to get outside...) So I can say with a great deal of authority that skunk spray does not necessarily out-funk dry pasta flambé in the lingering aroma department, because THIS HOUSE STINKS!!!!!!!!
*no brownies were injured in the making of this self-induced drama*
I applaud your efforts.
Too many people now-a-days believe everything they hea., (Especially onthe Internet).
So its admirable that rather than believing its true without being sure, you decided to find out for yourself!
(Are you by nature a curious person? Were you ever interested in Science?)
Clearly it’s the fault of the manufacturer. The package did not warn the purchaser in large lettering to add water. In the new USA, we must be cognizant of our dumbed down and regressive state. Just think how many lives have been saved by printing “this is not a toy” on plastic bags. I smell a lawsuit.
glad you saved the brownies.....
Instructions on the package say:
STEP ONE:
bring to boil 6-8 cups of water
Instructions on the package say:
STEP ONE:
bring to boil 6-8 cups of water
I suppose it would be logical to assume that most people of that age would be capable of reading that-- but given the current quality (or lack thereof) of many American schools, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising
Ok....I was cooking spaghetti for my family when I was 15....but that was 40 years ago. Parents expected their children to learn simple task like cooking.
I don't blame the schools. I blame the parents. Parents of kids these ages tended to be helicopter parents. They didn't let the little darlings ever do anything for themselves. And if they are studying in Italy, they probably came from money so they always had servants to do the heavy lifting.
Thank christ my kids can cook spaghetti without burning down the house
To be fair they were in Italy so the instructions would have been in Italian.
Yeah, but, if they are studying there, shouldn't they be able to read Italian?
Valid point but maybe not, I lived in Germany for four years and never learned to do more than order a meal and beer.
Lol "Ein jaagerschnitzel mit pommes und biere bitte". Not the healthiest meal ever but dang they had good schnitzel and beer.
Well, in Italy, the instructins were probably in Italian.....maybe they can't read Italian....I know I'm making excuses for stupid.
Or possibly, Italians wouldn't need instructions for cooking pasta like silly American students.....
I had to learn to cook when I was 6 y/o. My Mother had just come home from having surgery and was bed ridden, and my Father was working 2 jobs to pay for all the medical bills associated with my Mother's illness and surgery.
None of our family members either couldn't, or wouldn't, come to help out at that time. So I had to learn to do cook and do house work at a very young age. I had to stand on an orange crate to reach the top of the stove, and how to work the oven. I had watched my Mother and Father in the kitchen, as both were avid cooks, so cooking came sort of natural with me. I had helped my them prepare many vegetables and how to make bread and fry bread, so I was able to make several dishes to at least keep my Mother fed something besides peanut butter sandwiches.
It was during this time that I learned to be inventive with cooking, as when we would run out of things before my Father could go grocery shopping, I had to make do with what I could find. However, there were times when peanut butter sandwiches were a life saver. (grin)
It's terrible that a kid that young is forced to take over a major family chore, but you came through it with flying colors.
My mother had the best recipe for spaghetti sauce that I've ever had. She wasn't Italian and it probably wouldn't have been recognized as a "real Italian" recipe but it was amazing. Only thing I remember is it had a lot of bay leaf in it. I actually helped her make it once when I was about 10 or 11. Unfortunately, the recipe died with her soon after that. Just thinking about it makes me want to find a recipe with bay laurel as its basis and try to make it.
It was hard, having to learn to do all that kind of things by myself. Fortunately, my Mother and Father were able to answer my questions and verbally guide me along. Learning how to adjust the flame on the stove was the first thing that I had to learn, and timing for things in the oven. Luckily, I had learned to tell time the previous year, so that helped. I was too young to realize the magnitude of what I was doing, I just knew that I had to do it, as there was no one else to do it. Doing the laundry was not that hard, I'd been doing it for a while anyway. Hanging the clothes on the close line was a bit hard, I had to stand on the orange crate to hang them on the line, but, I just did what I had to do. And....since I really liked to cook, it did not seem to be that kind of chore for me.
All I knew was that I had to take care of my Mother when she needed me, just like she did me when I needed her. You just do it, even if you fail a few time, you just keep trying. I never thought it was a biggie. And it made me a stronger person.
When I was five years old, I was staying for a week on my grandparent's farm. They had to go outside to put some cattle into a pasture. I wasn't allowed to go outside until this was done because they had a pretty nasty bull. While I waited inside, I decided that I wanted some cocoa. Even at five, I could read pretty well, although slowly, so I made it following the instructions on the can of Hershey's Cocoa. The mixture in the pan was smoking pretty good when my Grandma came back in. How was I to know that the part about putting milk into the mix came at the bottom of the recipe, after the part about mixing the dry ingredients and putting them on the stove. I also had a problem when I told my Grandma that I couldn't figure out how big a dish of salt I should put into it, so I used one of her candy dishes. The problem was that, by that time, both of my grandparents were rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.
I am not Italian, but, I learned to make spaghetti sauce from my Ex-Father-In-Law, who was Sicilian. He, like me, loved to cook, as many Italian men do, and I wanted to learn from scratch. I learned that there is a difference in the sauces depending on what part of Italy you came from. The Northern Italian sauce was sweeter, mainly due to the fact that the tomatoes grown in that part of Italy were more bitter and acidic that those grown in the Southern part of Italy. I was told that the bitterness came from so much volcanic ash in the soil, which is not present in the Southern part, where to tomatoes are less bitter and less acidic as there is less, if any, volcanic ash in the soil in that area.
I like the tartness of the Sicilian sauce, as I am not that fond of sweet things. When I make the sauce, I make enough to use for other things as well, such as Lasagna, stuffed steak, Veal Parmesan, Chicken Cacciatore, Stuffed Manicotti, Eggplant Parmesan and of course, spaghetti.
Making Cannolis shells and stuffing them is a bit of a chore, but, they are sooo good. I make them every year for Christmas.
LOL!!! I learned to cook a great deal from my Paternal Grandmother. She was a country girl from East Texas and like many of her time, she had a big garden and raised chickens. She made most things from scratch, and one the things that I loved most about visiting her was that she made homemade ice cream in the metal ice trays in the freezer. One afternoon when she was out working in the garden I decided to help her and make some ice cream myself.
I remembered everything that needed to go into the ice cream so I put it all together, poured the mixture in the 2 empty ice trays and then put them in the freezer. When she came back in the house I had a big smile on my face and was proud that I had made her some nice ice cream to cool off with . When she took the one ice tray out the contents spilt all over her and the floor. It was then I remembered that you are supposed to use heavy cream and not just milk, and boil the ice cream a bit before putting it in the freezer or else it won't set up. Luckily, my Grandmother had a good sense of humor and was not mad at me.
And Grandmother used to make wine from the red grapes and blackberries that grew in her garden. When I visited one summer, I saw a mason jar with what looked like grape juice in it on the kitchen counter, and thought I'd have a glass. Not knowing it was wine instead, I poured me a big glass of it and drank it down. WHOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!! Man.......what a buzz!
When Grandmother found me she took me outside and turned the hose on me, which was really very cold. She gave me some ipecac and made me throw it up, then what headache. That was the last time I drank anything I didn't ask about first at Grandmothers.
You can come over and make cannoli or fry bread for me anytime!
You're on! And I'll bring some Cherokee Corn Pie as well. That has been a family favorite since my Cherokee ancestors passed it down.
That reminds me of this cartoon:
exactly
Do you ever find sometimes that the directions to stuff is effed up?
I found that a lot when I worked with a HACH analyzer.
Step One: Pour sample into sample cell
Step Two: Set analyzer to 7
Step 3: Pour reageant in sample cell before setting analyzer to 7
grrrr............
Of course there are many people in the world who aren't exactly..the sharpest knife in the drawer (to coin a phrase).
By now most people have probably seen this video-- but I'm going to post it here anyway!
If she had bigger breasts she would have won anyway.
Yep, so it is. Now, I think I'll watch it again, just to see if they get bigger than her brain (not a high bar to get over).
Sometimes there's a REALLY big disadvantage in not being able to open YouTube.
That video is a classic-- you might be able to find it on another site, even in China. Search for "Miss Teen USA South Carolina Answers a Question".
Wow-- I just checked. On YouTube supposedly it has 4,988,047 views! (The one linked to here was posted on YouTube on March 10, 2009).
FWIW - I don't know if its true or not,but some time ago someone who supposedly knows a lot about these sorts of things told me that on popular videos YouTube greatly inflates the numbers listed for hits from viewers.
Guess they would burn water too if they put it in a pot....lol......seriously shaking my head.
Been there! Done that!
Lol....At least you admit to it. Never burned water but burned other things by not stirring enough.
LIB-Left something on your wall.......enjoy.
Me too - had to scrub the pot a long time with steel wool after that.
Household tip-- if you don't want to scrub and/or scratch the pot, boil water in it with a lot of baking soda for a hour or more. Then while its still hot let it sit covered over night. (Doesn't work well if its a really heavy build up).
Or you could use Easy Off Oven Cleaner. But do not use that on Aluminum! (Actually probably should use baking soda on Aluminum either).
The black on the pot was worse on the outside than on the inside.
Here is another article on the same incident, translated from Italian in a local newspaper there.
Florence, students cook pasta without water and burn the house
The episode in Florence: three American students have confessed to the firemen that they put the pasta to boil without putting water in the pot
In the shadow of Brunelleschi's dome, they wanted to cook the most Italian of dishes: a nice plate of pasta with tomato sauce.
So three American students living in Florence put a pot of spaghetti on the fire but not knowing how to juggle in the kitchen they ended up setting the apartment on fire.
However, as reported by the Florentine newspaper the Nation , the three American twenties forgot to add a fundamental ingredient to properly cook any dish of dry pasta: water ! In fact, the young people simply inserted the spaghetti in the supermarket into the pot, turned on the stove and waited.
Needless to say, after a few minutes the pot caught fire, triggering a fire and throwing the girls into a panic. The three, however, have retained the calm necessary to call the firemen who promptly intervened to tame the flames that threatened the apartment.
The shocked firefighters candidly confessed that they had no idea how to cook pasta and did not know that water was necessary for the success of the dish.
OK, so the girls don't know how to cook and the firefighters (undoubtedly young and handsome) also don't know how to cook. Wonder what will happen after the firemen take the young ladies out to dinner. Hmmmm....John, I see a pattern developing here with what is usually the standard ending for this type of story.
Imagine if they did it the other way-- instead of adding pasta but no water-- imagine if they opened the box on pasta, set it out on the table-- and only added the water! (Missing the other fundamental ingredient...the pasta). After cooking the water for the proper amount of time (listed on the package) when it was done they would've looked into the pot-- and discovered that they had nothing to eat for dinner!
There are two essential ingredients here--I suppose the moral of the story is that if you leave out either-- there will be nothing to eat for dinner!
(Well, they would've had a lot of hot water-- they could make tea-- lots of it! Provided, of course, that they actually put rea in the water before drinking it-- a crucial step).
"We put the pasta on the fire without the water, we thought it was cooked like that," the students said.
The Problem with Students these days is, they try to think for themselves. This is what happens when "Students" go outside their "Safe Spaces" ! They don't know that someone actually wrote on the package on how to cook the item they bought.
School is such a "Learning" experience ain't it. "Liberal Arts" degree's......
I bet they were all blondes.
Isn't that living in the pasta?
yer making me hungry and I just had lunch
If one is unsure how to do something basic (like cook pasta) one need only use Google. There is no excuse for such ignorance.
Well, as we often see, sometimes folks are so ignorant that they don't know what they don't know.
Of course if they're that stupid, they might not know how to use Google. For example...do they know you have to type the search terms in the box on the Google page? You can't just go to Google and have it do what you're thinking it should do!
Or that after you do that, Google might get uppity and refuse to cooperate! (After all, why should we have to hit "Enter"/"Return"-- after the words are typed in, Google should know what to do!
I am not sure I can imagine a college student who is unable to Google for information. Seems almost impossible, eh?
Florentine chef Fabio Picchi sought to right the issue by offering the women four hours of Italian cooking lessons in one of his restaurants.
I hope he has plenty of fire extinguishers and his fire insurance up to date.
I honestly don't know how one gets to be 20 without knowing that you need water to cook pasta.
Kudos to the big-hearted chef who's going to give them cooking lessons. He may save a life.
Happy to say that I don't know any 20 year old who doesn't know to use water when cooking pasta.
My eight year old daughter made her own top ramen a few weeks ago while I was taking a nap, even she knew to boil the pasta in water...
In American educational institutions these days it's possible that when they have cooking class the students shout down the teacher because he/she is a conservative.
It's possible, but doesn't actually happen. A conservative chef would be someone who sticks to traditional recipes and gets angry if you try and wing it or try something new. A progressive chef is willing to use apple sauce in a cake recipe instead of extra oil, or makes cauliflower mashed potatoes and is willing to try other cultures foods like Sashimi or Tikka Masala.
But I applaud your effort in trying to politicize this innocuous thread.
Do you mean that because I use mashed bananas as an ingredient in flapjacks that makes me a progressive?
Yep.
Well, I can't be labelled because when it comes to politics, I swing both ways (I said POLITICS, so don't get funny).
Gotcha Buzz! You didn't think I'd let you get away with THAT statement, did you?
I knew I could count on you, Lenny. Where's my donut?
Sorry, where are my manners? Here, I even have a maple dip for you!
Maple dip! My favourite. Three of the homes I lived in during my life had Maple trees in the front yard.
Wow! Until now, I thought only my grandfather did that. That little trick got him invited to a TV cooking show.
Did what? Do you think I tapped the sap from those trees? LOL. To produce a maple sap product you need a whole lot more than a few trees.
I was referring to the bananas.
Ooops. Sorry. I didn't look at the numbers.
No harm, no foul.
When I was in 6th grade they taught practical subjects like "Home-making" (including cooking,etc) for the girls, "shop" for the boys. (Of course now that would be considered sexist). They could allow kids of either sex to pick which ones they wanted to study. I don't know if they still teach practical stuff-- I imagine they spend time on "test taking skills" so they can "get into a good college".
Or maybe stupid courses that anyone can pass so they can all get admitted to college...?
I dunno, at my school there were several boys in my cooking class. A couple were really good cooks. The others were just there to hit on the girls. After we mad them eat a few of our OOOP's they got the hint that the girls just weren't into them.
In third year high school I could choose one of Woodworking (using a lathe and other power tools to build s chair or something), Motor Mechanics (taking a Chevy engine apart and putting it together again), or Commercial (Touch typing and bookkeeping). Fortunately I took Commercial, although at the time it was nowhere within anyone's imagination that it would come in handy for using a computer.
My son is taking what amounts to a home ec course that I believe is required for all 8th-graders. They learn basic cooking, safe foodhandling, and how to do laundry. I've seen little evidence that it has enhanced his cooking skills, and he told me that he didn't like any of the recipes they learned as well as what I fix.
He used to love to bake, but once he figure out that I was using halving and doubling recipes to teach him math, he decided it wasn't any fun anymore. But he still prefers the chocolate chip cookies we made to the ones he made in school.
Well, of course sandy. Everybody knows that mom's cookies are better than just about anybody else's. The exception is that grandma's cookies are better, as my grandchildren found out and I learned many years ago. Grandma won't let me even touch a cookie sheet since the last time I tried making them
My mom doesn't bake much in the way of sweets, but I have never been able to master her biscuits or cornbread. I've come close on the cornbread, but mine is missing something, and I can't figure out what it is.
Have you ever tried a half cup of honey? Not only makes it sweeter but acts as a binding agent. That one's my recipe, not my wife's. My only problem is with cookies, other stuff I'm pretty good at.
When my daughter was in home ec. class in high school, about half the class was boys. Some may have been chasing the girls, but I think that most wanted an easy A and the chance to get some really good food. Most of them outsmarted themselves; they got interested and became pretty good cooks themselves. The day that Karen (home ec. teacher) had the whole class make apple pies was unforgettable. I was filling in for the Biology teacher and the whole school started drifting toward the home ec. room, following the odor. The entire building smelled just like your grandma's kitchen on baking day. They had 40 apple pies for lunch that day and every one (including those made by the boys) was excellent. Karen was a darned good teacher.
Sweet cornbread ain't cornbread
It sounds like your daughter's home ec teacher is better than my son's. I'm not sure his class's cooking would ever be fit to serve to their fellow students.
Buttermilk?
Bacon grease?
Quality of corn meal?
Too many or or too few eggs?
I don't have an actual corn bread recipe. It depends on what I have on hand or what I am in the mood to eat. I rarely have buttermilk so I use whole milk mixed with full fat greek yogurt or sour cream.
Bacon grease, I usually have but sometimes I will use butter or olive oil instead.
I have to have yellow stone ground corn meal. This I am picky about.
Sometimes, I will use half white and half whole wheat flour.
I usually use 1 tablespoon of sugar.
In the fall, I like to add 1/2 can of pumpkin puree to the batter. I even add 1/2 can of pumpkin puree to my chili because I like the consistency it gives to the broth.
Baking is an adventure in my world. LOL!
"Baking is an adventure in my world."
Same here. I love to be creative in cooking. I make my own Chinese food from scratch. And I love making Japanese food as well. When people ask me for my recipes I tell them my taste buds are my recipe. That is how I learned to cook. By taste. I have written down some 'recipes' for family and Friends, at least as close as I can to a bit of this and a dash of that. But, like my Mother's and Grandmother's cooking, my cooking is mostly by taste. Thankfully, most of my family had the same taste in food as I did, so they never complained and never shied away from my table. (grin)
I google recipes on the internet. Read reviews and revisions and get some good tips. I will sometimes even print the recipe and then make notes of all of the substitutions I make. I have an oatmeal cookie recipe that I use as a base for a cake with chopped apples.
I am trying to eat seasoned fruits and vegetables without adding large amounts of fats and sugars.
I have even made biscuits using yogurt instead of butter, but I went back to butter. I just don't make them as often.
I have learned to make some things the day before I want to serve them so the flavors have time merge properly.
"I google recipes on the internet."
I have a 1940 Edition of the old Watkins recipe book that my Paternal Grandmother left me. It is really a very interesting book, with lots old fashioned recipes. My Grandmother used it a few times over the years when she wanted to try something new, but, most of her cooking was done by taste. It still has some of her handwritten recipes in it as well. I can't ever remember my Mother or Father using a recipe. And other food cuisine that I learned to cook was only by verbal and visual instruction, such as Italian, Chinese, Japanese, French, and Mexican, from people who were of those heritages. My two Grandmothers taught me to cook Cherokee dishes, as they were both full Cherokee and had learned from their own Mothers and Grandmothers.
With Chinese the two I learned are Schezwan and Cantonese. Both are really good, and both have their own distinct taste.
That is neat!
I was raised in the Arkansas Ozarks where our diet revolved around fried foods, pinto beans and cornbread. Occasionally, we ate a very bland chili.
For most of my life, food was never really important. It was something to eat in order to live. I was far too busy to spend much time in the house or kitchen.
It was only after age slowed me down that I have taken an interest in cooking. Quitting smoking 4 years ago has given me an interest in eating. LOL!
Yeah, age has a way of changing some things in our life, if only to some degree. Now living alone, and not having any family anymore, I don't cook as much as I used to. But, I still like to indulge once in a while.
Since I was raised in the various Southern states, I grew up with different versions of Southern cooking. All good stuff, and although I do cook a lot of that type of food, I steer away from too much fried foods at this point. But, I do make an exception for Southern friend chicken. Hard to beat it.
We use the same cornmeal, and we both use buttermilk. I actually try to follow her recipe, but her recipe is a "guesstimate" that she doesn't even follow. She just throws ingredients in until the batter looks right.
I don't put bacon grease in the batter, but I heat up my skillet (gotta bake cornbread in a cast iron skillet, amirite?) and fry the batter in bacon grease for a bit before I bake it.
Me, too. I used to try to mimic my grandmother's cornbread because I remember it as being so good. I now realize the extra ingredient was the love that I felt for my grandmother.
In my world, if a person is hungry, it will be the best meal they've ever eaten. If not, then it is just food.
This is why I am flexible with meal times. We eat when we are hungry instead of the clock.