/ck/ - Food & Cooking

My mother was a home ec teacher, vocational cooking teacher, and chef. My dad is a farmer/rancher. So to say I grew up in a culture of good food is an understatement. I learned about food literally from the ground up.
I never even saw boxed mac and cheese until I went to college and saw a girl in my dorm make it. I distinctly remember being horrified. Nothing I ate growing up came out of a box. Mom even squeezed our own citrus juices every day. In the spring, summer, and early fall, all our produce came out of a huge garden. All our beef, lamb, and poultry we raised ourselves. We had milk goats for a time when I was a kid, but my parents had phased them out by the time I was a teenager. My dad grew wheat, oats, sorghum, alfalfa, and other grains and grasses (a lot of those were for feeding/grazing the animals, though). We had pear trees, blackberry bushes, rose hips, peach trees, and a pecan orchard (with about 30 pecan trees). We had a few creeks where we fished for bass and catfish, and would make regular trips to the coast to fish as well. Anyway, my food memories of my parents are idyllic. Mom is a fantastic cook, she can cook anything. Too bad I live thousands of miles away from them now. I miss all that.