The necessity of learning to cook

Our Sunday paper ran a guest column from Jamie O'Neill about the dumbing down of cookbooks titled 'Knowledge shrinks as our waists expand'. I'm always into learning anything I can to keep my waist from expanding. The gist of the piece is that most Americans don't know how to cook due to our reliance on prepared foods. So that editors of cookbooks can assume very little comprehension of culinary terms by its users. Here's a telling excerpt:

Bonnie Slotnick, a woman who owns a rare cookbook shop in Greenwich Village, was quoted in an article about the uptick in culinary cluelessness, saying: "Thirty years ago, a recipe would say, 'Add two eggs.' In the '80s, that was changed to 'beat two eggs until lightly mixed.' By the '90s, you had to write 'in a small bowl, using a fork, beat two eggs.' We joke that the next step will be: 'Using your right hand, pick up a fork and…."

Sad to say. I think I am that reader. I never learned to cook. I think there was a short course in home ec in middle school in which we made muffins and sewed a pot-holder. Neither my muffins nor pot-holder turned out very good. My mom was a great cook in my younger years, then moved to convenience foods when she went back to work. I didn't learned to cook with her (or anyone else in my family), nor did I take initiative to learn it on my own -- until I had my own kids and became freaked out enough by the ingredients in processed foods. As much as I sigh and groan when my kids ask if they can 'help' when I cook, I usually agree even though it slows down the process immensely and threatens the end results. I hope that they will learn that cooking is fun, necessary and rewarding, and won't suffer from all the cooking insecurities that I have now.

How did you learn to cook? How are you teaching your kids the culinary arts?