“Why do I need to cook?”
That might be the question you’re asking yourself—and honestly, it’s a great one.
I asked myself the same thing once, too. So let me share how I first learned to cook, and why it ended up changing everything for me.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when food was both trendy and highly processed. My mom had four kids and fully embraced the convenience of frozen Banquet chicken pot pies, fried chicken, and corn dogs. We happily cleaned our plates and left the table full and content. Veggies came from cans—creamed corn, stewed tomatoes, and French-style green beans were household staples. Snacks? Think Hostess Twinkies, Del Monte fruit cups, and those unforgettable Apple Fruit Pies. We washed it all down with Kool-Aid and A&W Root Beer.
The ironic thing? We were all rail-thin.
We lived outside, biking, skateboarding, and playing kick-the-can until the sun went down—burning off every last bite of our boxed dinners. We were mostly healthy…if you ignore the constant runny noses and weekly allergy shots. (And don’t even get me started on the powdered milk situation—we used Coffee-mate instead. Oy vey. Our poor, confused little bodies.)
Everything shifted for me in high school when my mom took a cooking class from Leeann Chin.
(Yes, that Leeann Chin—the beloved chef who later opened a successful chain of fast-casual Asian restaurants.) Inspired by her, I decided to try my hand at cooking. At 16, I cracked open a cookbook, found a recipe for chicken crepes, and got to work.
But I didn’t cook for my family—at age 15, I invited my girlfriends over for my very first dinner party.
I made a creamy chicken filling, wrapped it in homemade thin pancakes, and served it with pride. It was delicious. We savored every bite. And something clicked for me that night.
I don’t remember whipping up any other gourmet meals right away after that, but I do remember the confidence I felt.
I realized I could cook.
I could create something from scratch and share it with people I cared about. And that feeling was enough to carry me into the next chapter of my culinary journey.
College was my crash course in more than academics—it was where I first started paying attention to what food was doing to my body. From overloaded salad bars to a love affair with coffee that landed me in the health clinic, I quickly learned that “healthy” wasn’t always what it seemed. As I moved out of the dorms and into off-campus apartments, I started experimenting in the kitchen—not always successfully, but always with curiosity. It was the beginning of me trying on adulthood, one meal at a time.
Read more in my next blog post: THE DINING ROOM YEARS
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