COOKING

I married very young. In fact, I had only been 18 a month when I married for better or worse, etc. And I meant every single word of it.  So did he.  It has lasted a long, long time.

But when I was first married, I was determined to learn to cook and cook really good.  Everyone else seemed to know how, so I would too. I had some new cookbooks and so I spent a lot of time reading through them picking out what I thought sounded really good.  And easy.  And impressive.  Of course.  I worked full time and didn’t have a lot of time for cooking, but I was definitely determined.

On this day, I had read about blanched spaghetti.  Now that sounded truly marvelous since I had never even heard of it. So I decided I would have that for supper.  Didn’t sound hard to fix either.  I just put a pan of water on the stove and cooked the spaghetti.  Then it said in order to blanche it, all you had to do was pour cold water over it  Even I could manage that one!

So I prepared all the rest of the dinner for my new husband and I and then prepared the blanched spaghetti.  We sat down, smiling at one another as usual.  I was so proud of everything new that I did.  We ate in silence.  But we both enjoyed the meal.  Then he got up from the table and said, ‘I never ate cold spaghetti before.’  I said, ‘I didn’t either.  But I don’t think I will fix that one again.’  He smiled and agreed and we both went on about our business.  It was awhile before I understood what I had prepared. Just spaghetti that had been washed so it wouldn’t stick together after cooking.

I don’t recommend fixing blanched spaghetti for your supper tonight. But it sounded good back then.  Life was wonderful and  I wouldn’t have missed those times for anything in the world.

Since then, I have learned a lot about cooking and how to feed all those hungry kids and make them think it is a really good meal.  But I never tried blanched spaghetti again.  Don’t think I could sell any of them on that.

I have a really good cookbook out now.  It’s called Bet’s Cookbook and has a lot of original recipes and some not so original in it.  It tells exactly how to put together really good meals that don’t cost much and are easy to prepare.  My kids loved all my cooking and that is the best recommendation I could ever have.   If you might be interested in buying one of my cookbooks, please send $12 including postage to BET, P.O. Box 2249, Benton, AR  72018.  I have other really great books, too.  Look me up on Amazon sometime.

But don’t fix blanched spaghetti.