Cooking With Dartha: The First Thing I Ever Cooked Was Not Edible…

But that's because it was invisible.

Let me explain...

Dartha is not my name. Dartha was my paternal grandmother; my Nana. In the 1960’s she used to live with us for part of every year. During those visits, before I started going to school full time, she was my playmate and best friend. It was a friendship that lasted until she passed away in the early 1970’s.

Nana and I would talk and watch TV together. She would tell me stories of when my father was a boy and teach me things; like how to play Bingo or Roulette. Seriously, I was three and had a toy Roulette game, purchased by her no doubt. That explains my current enjoyment of the occasional visit to a casino. But more to the point she taught me how to cook. Not real cooking - I was far too little to reach the stove or pick up the heavy cast iron pans that were once hers and then my mother’s (and now mine) - but pretend cooking; hence the title of this, my first post.

Nana would sit at the kitchen table and instruct me in her methods of preparing a roast turkey dinner, or a big pot of soup or maybe one of her special desserts and I would pretend to cook, stirring empty bowls and pots full of imaginary ingredients. The recipes were endless. Nana had a vast knowledge of cooking and of course when you are preparing pretend food, the pantry is always full of every ingredient you will ever need.

Born in the 1880's on a farm in Listowel Ontario, she was raised by her maternal grandfather. When she was about eighteen she moved to Toronto where the census records of the time show her as "a domestic". Married young and widowed twice she raised six children mostly on her own. She ran a boarding house to support them and at one time was a camp cook "up north".

The meals we would "prepare" together fueled not only my preschooler’s imagination, but fostered in me a lifelong love of cooking.

Family and friends tell me I’m a good cook. I like to think that’s true but what do they know? They all love me – they have to say that don’t they?

Not necessarily… my husband will tell you I have had my share of disasters in the kitchen and a few truly inedible meals have ended up in the garbage in favour of a take-out pizza. As for family gatherings and dinner parties with friends there was a time when I would practice each and every recipe I planned to prepare until I was absolutely certain I could pull it off. And I sometimes still spend hours going through cookbooks and surfing the internet in search of the perfect recipes to prepare for my guests.

A chef I am not, but I think I can say I have become a fairly competent home cook and there is nothing I enjoy more than preparing a well cooked meal and serving it to people I care about; whether it’s a quiet supper for two or an extravagant dinner party for eight.

So welcome to my first post on my first blog. I have been considering doing this for some time and have put a lot of thought into what I want it to be. Or more accurately, what I don’t want it to be.

It is not my aim to teach you how to cook by providing a photographic chronicle of each and every step of a recipe. Websites and blogs that do that can be very informative, but I sometimes find it annoying having to scroll through picture after picture of a recipe in progress when all I really want is to get to that recipe the search engine pointed me to.

So I will assume for the most part that you are comfortable in your kitchen and know your way around a recipe. That’s not to say I won’t explain things or provide a photo of the end product – there’s nothing worse than a confusing recipe and it’s always nice to see what you’re supposed to end up with.

As for what my blog will be, let’s find that out together.