Culinary Memoir

I remember when I was around 8 years old in Mrs. Thomas' second grade class. We had a project about mailing a small three inch paper character named Flat Stanley. I was allowed to color in a red shirt with blue jeans on him with some colored pencils that I had brought to school. The idea of this project was for each of us to send him out along with a letter to a friend or family member that lives far away and for them to become pen pals to help with our writing skills. I thought at the time that this was going to be a fun project because I had just learned how to write in cursive; and I wanted to show people how nice I thought my cursive looked. When I went home that afternoon, I asked my mom when she was in the kitchen chopping some vegetables for dinner, who I could send Stanley to. She stopped chopping for a few seconds, then continued and told me that I could send it to my Aunt back in New Jersey. Excited about the answer, I decided to run over to the dinner table and write the letter.
A few weeks later we received a brown package at the front door the size of a shoe box that was labeled for Andrew Lu. I was extra excited that it came in a box because it looked almost like a Christmas present. I took the box inside with my mom and opened it in the living room. I was the kid that liked to peel off each fold carefully so not to rip the wrapping. When I opened the box there was a layer of white packing popcorn that I anxiously piled in a little mound on the table because I wanted to see what was at the bottom of the box. It turns out that it was a box of really colorful salt water taffy from the local beach where my Aunt lived. I grabbed one and started chewing on it while I unwrapped the two balls of newspaper to find a dried up, brown and prickly starfish. In the second, there was a clean white sand dollar that looked like a chalky white disc with a fossilized starfish in the middle. All of this was interesting but what I got on that plain white paper was what really made my day. In the letter it said that my Aunt was coming to visit us in California in a few weeks for Thanksgiving. We had not been able to see my mom's side of the family because we moved out to California while they stayed in New Jersey. So being able to see family, especially the Aunt that I thought was the fun one, for the holidays is always that cherry on top of that hot fudge sundae.
The few memories that I can actually remember are of my sister and I baking chocolate chip cookies and brownies with my aunt. We used to help measure out each of the ingredients while she did all the harder work like whipping the eggs and working the mixing machine. There would always be plenty of snacks when my Aunt was around, and I think to this day I probably started liking baking because of her. I remember distinctively after eating her home made cookies that they were so much better than the Chip Ahoy cookies my mom bought for us sometimes from the neighborhood Lucky's which is now an Albertson's. I didn't decide that I wanted to become a baker or that I wanted to start baking every weekend, but I remember noticing.
Whenever she could, my Aunt would visit and we would bake and she would bring us books to read. And as my sister and I got older, she let us have more responsibilities, like cracking the eggs and mixing them and rolling the cookie dough into balls while sneaking little bites of cookie dough even though my mom said it was bad to eat it because it had raw eggs in it. It was hard at first to even crack the egg without having to fish out a few pieces of shell that had fallen in. But after a few tries I got the hang of it. I was getting more comfortable in the kitchen, with the stove, oven, utensils and even the knives. Which used to be off limits for our safety. And over the years my mom would let me help prepare all sorts of food in the kitchen from skinning potatoes and chopping carrots, to making garlic butter French bread and pancakes.
In the tenth grade in high school around Thanksgiving, I decided that I wanted to bake a few pumpkin pies for the family to eat on Thanksgiving that week. I remember finding an ad in a food magazine that contained a simple looking pumpkin pie recipe. Pure pumpkin, cinnamon, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, evaporated milk and pie shell. I bought all the ingredients with my own money at the local Albertson's, but this time it's in a different city because we moved, and walked home to get everything ready. When I get to the kitchen I start my "Mise en place", gathering all the needed ingredients in three separate servings. I remember adding a little extra of every ingredient to be on the safe side but i ended up making enough pumpkin pie mix for almost an extra pie. When the pies were done baking, I could smell the sweet aroma of pumpkin and cinnamon spices and heat from the oven making the kitchen warmer. I had never had a pumpkin pie before let alone bake three of them so I was a little nervous about how they came out. And waiting for them to cool down was almost like torture. I wanted to see how I did, but reassuringly my mom told me that they would be fine and to just go take a shower and clean up for the Thanksgiving dinner we were having at my grandparent's house down the street. When we got to their house, I walked inside with a pumpkin pie in each hand and a huge smile on my face because my grandma ran up laughing and joking how grown up I was because she heard that I was able to bake something in the kitchen by myself. I laughed and went to put them down and got something to drink before dinner started. After everybody ate a few platefuls of turkey, potatoes with beef gravy, orange sweet yams with toasted marshmallows among other Thanksgiving dishes we all seemed too full to eat anything else. But I reminded everybody that I still had pumpkin pies in the kitchen and somehow I got everybody to try a piece. What made me happy was that we finished the rest of the pie right after. My aunts and grandparents told me how much they liked the pie and told me I should try to make a different dish next year. And that pretty much started my real interest in cooking in the kitchen. Over the years since high school I have made different dishes each year, always trying to make something better then what I did the year before. This past Thanksgiving, I made a few dishes that I learned from Culinary 1 with Chef Whitmore along with a pumpkin pie. But I was inspired this year by a friend to prepare and cook the entire Thanksgiving dinner next year for my entire family, with a little help of course. And maybe even show them a few drinks I learned in the bar tending class! That would be an even better Thanksgiving.