We cooked a little bit but mostly this expanded horizon came through restaurants. It was there that I had - for the first time - sushi, Chinese, Thai and Indian food, pizza not from national chains, French and Italian food, all sorts. I went with these friends to restaurants - all sorts, because well, it was Berkeley. My friends were from all over, mostly California, but from all sorts of backgrounds. And things started to change when I got to college in Berkeley. But it did cause me to approach cooking differently. They did the best they could with the tools they had at the time. And we rarely went to restaurants, and when did it was generally for simple and quick meals. Not a whole lot of conversation: just focus on the food and be done. We had one of everything, and when we ran out of something, you went to the store to get another. In the home I grew up in we very much operated with a “just-in-time” food inventory approach. The concept of a pantry was new to me as an adult. Multitasking did not come easily to her, and neither of my parents had strong organizational skills. My mother, in spite of her good intentions and efforts, was plainly speaking a horrible cook.

The home I grew up in was somewhat of a cooking wasteland.

Cooking companions recipes