I was actually looking for a quote about how badass my Mother was. Because she was. But then I came across this quote and it made me laugh. Laughed so much, I knew I needed to make a Wednesday Whoa post about my Mother who couldn’t cook. She was a skilled baker, known far and wide for her pies and cookies. But desserts can’t sustain you and neither could my Mother’s cooking.

A chef’s palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.

Marco Pierre White

I saw this quote and found it hysterical. My Mother couldn’t cook. She could bake like nobody’s business but cook? Nah! It was awful. Ever have a rock-hard pork chop? I have. Several. Courtesy of my Mother.

My Dad was a chef. He learned to cook as a child because his Mother was ill. By the time she died when he was 13, he was cooking for the family and taking care of his younger sister while the older siblings worked. They each gave him money for taking care of the house.

My Dad and Mother married in 1940. On the first day they were sharing their home together, she decided to make eggs for him. The only problem is that she never made eggs. Her Mother never taught her children how to cook, she only taught them how to bake.

So there’s my Mother making what she thought were perfect eggs for her new husband and when she presented the plate, Dad scraped them all into the garbage and told her that from now on he’d be doing all the cooking. And he did. Except for a couple of years during the war, he cooked all of the meals right up until I got into 5th grade in the early 70s.

That’s when Dad got a job that meant he was cooking dinner somewhere else. So Monday through Friday, Mother would cook for us. Did I mention rock-hard pork chops? Yeah. That’s when her three youngest children started learning defensive cooking. I don’t have a chef’s palate, I just learned enough to make my own meals and open my own cans.

The only bright light in her dinners was when she baked mac and cheese. She excelled at that, but it was baking. She also made a stew of ground beef, potatoes, and red beans that she called chili because she added cayenne pepper to it. We liked that. Except for baked beans and German potato salad that were only made during the holidays, that was it for her cooking abilities.

My life lesson from all of this is that men belong in the kitchen. But my Mother made the best pies!