MY mother openly admitted that she didn't know how to cook when she got married. Good thing Daddy could, and he taught her.

Before my teens, my mother had several serious illnesses, and we had a housekeeper who came in during the day. Being the oldest (of 4 children), it fell on me to cover finishing the dinner Elaine had started to prepare, if my father was held up at work.
My grandmother also helped out, and we often stayed at her house...she was probably my main teacher in the kitchen.

Daddy taught me the southern cooking of his childhood.

As a teen, my favorite TV show was Julia Child on PBS. I know, it was kind of weird - but she really transferred the joy of cooking to me.

What I knew, I learned from cooking with my roommates and a little from cooking at home but mostly from the same cookbook that Jasdip learned from and I also still have that cookbook.

I never really learned to cook - Mom was a neat freak and didn't want any messes in her kitchen. When I got married the first time, we ate whatever I could put together - sometimes it was o.k., other times it wasn't, but he didn't complain too much.

I was divorced for 25 years, living on basic staples, until I re-married. He had discriminating tastes and tolerated my attempts to cook. After his third complaint, I handed it over to him and he cooked most of our meals until he became ill and could no longer do so.

I am now alone again and cook when I want, what I want and usually eat the basic bachelor foods.

So, to answer your question - I never really learned to 'cook', but I can bake and make candy with the best of them!

My mother made me learn to cook when I was 10 or 11 years old. Mom grew up on a farm, the 11th of 12 children. (There was a 27-year age difference from the oldest to the youngest child, and several were gone before my mother was born.) Her mother died when Mom was 6 years old. So she had to learn to cook, clean, iron, etc., and she was determined that I would learn at a young age. I didn't like it, but I'm glad I learned from a pro.

She was a SAHM and Dad came home every night to a wonderful meal. My parents, brother and I sat down to the table together every night and talked about our day. It was family time. Mom was like June Cleaver!

By trial and error and cookbooks. I was never able to cook growing up. Grandma lived with us and she also didn't want the mess or me breaking something. Hubs and I didn't go for a honeymoon, and the first morning of our married life, he asked whats for breakfast and my reply was i didn't know, we didn't have any Wheaties. Mom gave advice when I asked for it, but she had my little sister to take care of....and grandma who we now think, she was in Alzheimers. So I guess I didn't do too bad. Hubs is still around 57 yrs later.

My Mom was a great cook. She was a dairy farmers wife and often had to feed a crew of men. I learned a few of the basics from her but not a lot. My 1st wife was a SAHM so for 16 years I helped very little in the kitchen. Then, she got sick and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. It was an extremely aggresive form; from when she 1st started feeling sick until she died was just under 2 months. All at once I was a widower with 5 kids ranging in age from 15 to 3. Amazing what you can do when you have to. There was nothing fancy but I kept them fed. A year later I married Bigbaby who is a fantastic cook. She has helped me refine my kitchen skills. We also made sure the kids all know how to cook.

Ron

I joined 4-H when I was 8 or 9 and took Food Prep. And I always liked to be in the kitchen watching, but mother preferred everybody OUT while she dirtied every pot and pan in the house :-) She did not believe in clean as you go, but then she had all us kids to do those dishes after dinner. I think I learned some things by osmosis!

When I was a young adult I lived in an apartment with two other girls and about killed us all one night by serving really bad hot dogs. You can imagine how fun that night was with three sick people and one bathroom.

Then I got married and could cook enough to get by, but just did it because it had to be done. It was later I met a new neighbor who just cooked and baked all the time. Her food was so good (she shared a lot, bless her) that it got me interested in trying new things. It was a real eye-opener and I found out I really liked doing it. I couldn't wait to retire so I could spend more time in the kitchen!

I'm still not crazy about the everyday cooking unless I have a new recipe to try.

I'm enjoying reading how you all learned to cook!

I taught myself to cook at about age ten for our large family from my mother's very old edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Then and now my passion has always been baking.

Like Jasdip, my husband likes everything I cook and never fails to compliment me, which has encouraged me to try all kinds of new recipes.

My mom wasn't a particularly good cook. I don't think she enjoyed it. I always liked to look at cook books and liked pretty presentations. I still remember the meal I made my in-laws the first time they came to dinner. Shweizerschnitzel from that Betty Crocker cookbook......and a peach spice cake with peach halves on top, a cube of sugar dipped in something (I don't remember what) to make it flame when you lit it. My MIL laughed about it afterwards. She said it was the typical new bride's dinner for the in-laws.

My mom didn't cook much, she worked nearly all of my childhood. I watched and helped my grandma, peeling potatoes and cleaning carrots are two very vivid memories I have of helping in the kitchen. I was taught basics by my high school best friend's mom, our home-ec teacher, Mrs. Good. The rest I learned from mom's 1940 something edition of "The Joy of Cooking" and calls to grandma, Aunt Leona and yet again, Mrs. Good along with watching Jeff Smith (Frugal Gourmet) and Julia Child.

My mom worked and I was the youngest. I was cooking dinner from an early age because my older sisters would delegate that chore to me. I've always loved food so cooking was something I loved to do. In the early years I learned by trial and error. We had a few cookbooks at home but they weren't used much. Although my mom was notorious for leaving me a recipe telling me to leave out this and substitute that for that and skip this step, etc until the recipe was basically just there for inspiration.

I watched cooking shows but there were only a couple of them on PBS at that time. There was no internet. Most of what I cooked was very basic, things I'd grown up eating, so there were never any disasters (unless you count unknowingly using an ingredient my dad didn't like, like sour cream).

I'm still learning. I've tried over 1,000 new recipes since I started blogging in 2005 but I still learn new things all of the time.

Oh Ron, I had no idea (of course) that your first wife died SO suddenly!!! How tragic.

You've had 2 wonderful wives, they were meant to be.

Isn't it amazing how many of us...ah huuum...older...women were cooking at very young ages but now a child of 17 is pretty much totally helpless and considered too young to take on any responsibility beyond MAYBE picking up his or her room every now and then? I can remember my best friend at age of 8 was cooking full meals and babysitting her younger sister while her mother worked as a nurse!

I don't really remember my mother teaching me how to cook but somehow I just picked up the basics and learned from my Betty Crocker Cookbook the rest.

I figure I'm still learning. I didn't do a lot of "cooking" at home, but did do some baking. Then when I moved out some people kept giving me flak how I'd be "eating at home" all the time like so many at the time and I said no way and refused. Of course I'd have a meal with the folks on occasion but my mother didn't last long after I moved out. My options were essentially McDonalds, TV dinners or learn to cook something and I chose the last. Started out with the basics, burgers, fries, etc, then "advanced" to trying to duplicate some favorite school lunches and meals at home.

Then started watching some cooking shows, Frugal Gourmet, Justin Wilson, Franco Palumbo, Nathalie Dupree and others and learned a lot and also got over the fear of trying. A lot of people like my cooking. Also was an avid camper and sandwiches and hot dogs over the campfire only go so far and I usually would be the designated cook. When I went hunting I knew I had to cook or we were going to eat out because my hunting partners couldn't make a TV dinner. Things have progressed more and more. The internet came along and opened up a lot of avenues of learning too which further advances things. I'll never be a gourmet cook but then again, I don't want to be one either. I like simple fare that tastes good.

I learned by watching my Grandma and my Mother. Then of course I took some years of Home Ec. in school. I think you learn all your life. I never baked a pie until after I was married, but I watched and remembered a lot.

Sue

No one really cooked in my family. My mother and grandmother made the most basic of meals that relied heavily on ground hamburger and canned vegetables. My jobs have always required lots of hours so I've never had the time or interest to teach myself to cook. While I was recovering from surgery, I started watching Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals. She always shows basic cookery techniques and the 30-minute timing is encouraging to a non-cook. Of course, it's likely to take me closer to 60 minutes to make one of her meals or more if you include clean-up, but she's still responsible for awakening my interest in cooking.

I've moved on to recipes from Ina Garten, Claire Robinson and Giada DeLaurentiis. I still don't know much of the science and chemistry of cooking, but I can prepare a basic meal with fresh ingredients now and can confidently follow a recipe.

Learned in high school cooking classes. first DH was an AF Cook and learned a lot from him. Always loved cookbooks and the early Cooking shows on TV.

I grew up in a home where our mother was an excellent cook and we had wonderful meals served to us. She baked our bread and let nothing go to waste. She turned left over stale bread into the most wonderful bread pudding, and did the same thing with left over rice or egg nog.

I did not learn to cook from her as she died when I was 12. When I was 15, my older sister married and moved far away. Suddenly, I was the chief cook for my father, brother and younger sister. They suffered in silence as I learned to cook. My aunt gave me the checkered Betty Crocker Cookbook as a gift after a visit from her and my paternal uncle. So I had that cookbook and the one that had been my mothers--The Way to a Man's Heart: The Settlement Cookbook. I do think that one of the reasons my DH was attracted to me when we met in college was that I could cook.

I learned by watching...Mom didn't feel like it...I guess dealing with 7 of 7 kids...she was tired of teaching...but I learned more from her then she thought I did...My older sister has taught me things...I've learned bunches from y'all here...some things are harder then others...I've never mastered bread baking or making a pie...I really haven't tried...but it's not rocket science...some day...we're feasting on some homemade veggie soup today...it never comes out the same way twice...but it's edible!

It is interesting how reading about how others learned to cook has reminded me of how I learned. I do remember my Dad helping me to cook spaghetti when I was about 10. But I did take Home Ec. in school for several years...like Jr. Hi and Senior Hi and I had forgotten that. Remembering what a great progressive school system San Francisco had at the end of WWII...both during the school year as well as "summer school" for kids of working parents. We could take a page from then and use it now for many many reasons; what an experience it was...and soon forgotten it seems. But that is another subject.

After that it was mostly good women sharing what they knew from person to person. Being a military wife had so many wonderful benefits, and sharing cultural foods and customs made my world small before its time. Today we share that via TV.... and that is good.

I love to cook, but I hate to "make dinner". Anyone else know what I mean? Sometimes it's just coming up with WHAT I want to make. Never made anything but fudge before I married. Now, I'm darned good, but I don't know how I got here.

Excerpted from my website:

Because I had four older sisters, my mother had more help in the kitchen than she knew what to do with, so I never learned to cook. I married my GI husband when I was twenty.

Our one room apartment didn't have a refrigerator so we could not keep anything fresh. I would go out every day while my husband was at the base and buy whatever I thought I could handle. I love breaded veal, and found a recipe in a magazine. Everything went well with the egg mixture, and up to the point where I read "dip in bread crumbs." I took several slices of bread and crumbled them up in a bowl, dipped the egg-coated veal in the bread and dropped it into a frying pan {{gwi:1550688}}of very hot grease.
I don't remember what we had for dinner that night, but it wasn't veal.

Sundays meant that we had to buy something on Saturday that wouldn't spoil. I remembered how Mama did hams, stuck with cloves and basted with brown sugar and mustard. Spam seemed pretty close to ham, and it came in a can so it could be bought ahead of time. I mixed mustard and brown sugar, coated the Spam, and stuck in the cloves. Oh, yes, I baked it. That was my attempt at gourmet cuisine, and it became our every Sunday dinner.

My long-suffering husband managed to survive, and when he was sent overseas and I went back home, I stayed in the kitchen with my Mom a lot. By the time he came home and we were on our own, I had become a very fair cook, and he asked me if we could please NEVER have Spam again.

Sue

I never took Home Ec in High school (or anywhere else). I was on student council, etc. and did get to know the Home Ec teacher. She felt every girl should take Home Ec., and I would tell her that there were more important classes, cooking, etc was easy.
Well, every year, there were state wide contests, sponsored by General Mills, Betty Crocker division - for the "Homemaker of Tomorrow". At the school level, Senior girls could take a series of written tests to compete. Since every Senior girl was eligible, and you got out of a couple of classes to take the test - I entered it.

I won for my school - still have that letter, and went onto the state finals, and finished 3rd in the state of NJ.

Poor Home Ec teacher was very upset.

I watched my mother cook and learned a few of her southern recipes, but I never actually cooked at home. When I grew up, I moved into an apartment and I remember one day I looked at the stove in my apartment and realized that I had my very own kitchen and I could cook anything I wanted...if I wanted. I didn't want to though, have never enjoyed cooking.

I've never really learned how to cook, in other words.

Majored in home ec and taught home ec, but I mainly learned to be the cook that I am thru years of my cooking.

I have my home ec college basic cookbook that I still use for reference.

DH taught me how to make chili and lemon/garlic chicken. We ate a lot of it while I learned to cook. Being the youngest, and a daddy's girl, I was kind of spoiled and not much was expected of me at home. My mom really didn't do me any favors. It took me years to become much of a housekeeper. LOL

I watched my Mom a lot in the kitchen. She often would tell me, that it is all in how you hold your mouth as you stir, chop, roll, shape or whatever she was doing at the time...then laugh.

When I was 14, Mom went to work full time. She got home about 5:30. My Dad, a coal miner got home an hour earlier. Mom worried that Dad would be hungry and didn't want him to have to wait till she could get a meal prepared. So since I got home from school at 3:30, I volunteered to at least get the dinner meal started. Mom at first told me what to cook, but she was a meat and potatoes oriented cook, and I soon got more adventurous and tried new things. Dad encouraged me and I loved the praise he lavished on each new thing. Pretty much, I got the basics from Mom, but a lot I learned by trial and error, but Dad never complained.

I grew up on a small farm. Mom was the main kitchen boss. There were times when we kids did pitch in to make the gravy or fry the potatoes for Sunday dinner. We had to fend for ourselves when Mum was sick or out of the house. Duirng the summer, we ate many lunches straight out of the garden. Examples: Lettuce, cabbage, and onions used for salads and garnishes in sandwiches. In late June, we picked fresh strawberries for dessert. Other fruits were gooseberries and grapes. In spring, there were asparagus sprouts. Later, ne could add green beans, peas or tomatoes. Carrots were on the menu, too. We'd gather what we wanted for lunch and then completed the meal with bread, salt, pepper, home made butter, cottage cheese, and maybe a couple strips of fried bacon.

Unfortunately, I did not pick up the great lore of the kitchen my mother had. (She ahd been trained on the frontier by her mom starting in Arkansas, then later to Oklahoma. When you are in a family of 10 siblings, you get your turn in the kitchen.) I went off to work my way through college - became proficient with a can opener... .

From my Mom. Both my Mom & Dad were born in Ireland, yes I am 100% Irish. She was a great cook & I loved helping her in the kitchen. When I got to be about 10 or 11 she let me do the cooking & baking every Sat. Some meals were good but most were not but she never made me stop. I am 67 & all of my cooking is from scratch. Not a fan of prepackaged foods. Always wished I could have become a chef, maybe in my next life.

Your heading presumes that I DID learn to cook. Well...not exactly! LOL

I can put a decent, well-balanced, appetizing meal on the table, and I have done it almost every night for 47 years. I can make a good piecrust, too, but I don't -- there being only two of us to eat a pie.

I have never embraced the idea of spending hours doing anything that's totally wiped out in 20 minutes. I have DONE holiday dinners, and the food was good, but...it's just not 'me'. I'm *exhausted* putting all that together because it feels like a chore to me.

I think this attitude comes from living with a grandmother who couldn't cook worth a darn and having a working mother, plus the fact that I am an "eat to live" person, not one who lives to eat.

My DS married into a large, extended, 'cooking' family. I'm so happy for him! (He did have to learn to STOP eating as much as they.)

I learned to bake, and to love to bake, from my grandmother who lived with us. So many mornings I'd get up and she'd already be up to her elbows in flour. I'd pull a chair over to the kitchen counter and "help" her. I wonder if she thought of it as helping!!!

Cooking, no. My Grandmother was a baker, and did fine with cooking (my mother worked), but it wasn't her forte or her love. My mother had a couple of specialties that nobody ever made any better, but she didn't like cooking (or baking) much at all. I do have my grandmother's recipe book and I cherish it. Unfortunately, I only have one of my mother's recipes. Granted, there were only 3 or 4 that she made great, but they were great. I have one.

The others weren't written down and so now are lost forever.

I'm a pretty darned good baker. For cooking, I can get by, but that's about it. That's why I depend upon the tried-and-true recipes from friends ....... (right, Jasdip???).

as the saying goes it is in my blood! From a family of fabulous Cajun cooks both male and female it just gets absorbed through the skin into the blood LOL
I watched and helped at the hip of those great cooks and even when they had no idea I was paying attention I was.
When I got married and my husband told my family what an amazing cook I was and how I made the best gumbo he had ever eaten (and he had eaten my Mom's) they all just looked at him like he was tripping. Then said we had no idea she could cook , where did you learn to cook? I just laughed and said where do you think watching all of y'all.

I did take home ec in high school back then we had to so I had a bit of training there too. It just comes pretty natural though was something I always enjoyed doing and creating new dishes. I am however not a big baker but then neither was my mother. My Dad was an amazing chef too.
All of us learned from them and we can all whip up a mighty fine spread.

watching my mother and home ec in hs, when they still had classes...and had an adventurous teacher as well..i brought in one of my cookbooks (mother gave me) with a picture of a crown pork loin, and we actually made it in class!

Like Jemdandy, I also grew up on a dairy farm, only at our farm we had a coal stove in the kitchen and we did not have running water. Our day started at 5am when we went to the barn to milk the cows and feed the stock and we finally went to the house for breakfast at 9am.

After breakfast grandad would assign one of us boys to help grandma in the kitchen for the day. That meant we had to carry 10 or 15gal of water in from the spring then shake the grate and clean the ashes out of the cookstove, and carry the ashes outside, then we had to go out to the coal pile outside and fill the coal bucket.

Grandma was cooking 3 meals a day for 15 farm hands plus she canned about 4,000 quarts of fruits, veggies, pickles and sausages to get us through the winter, and in her spare time she baked 20 loaves of bread, a couple dozen yiest rolls and two or three pies every Wednesday and did the laundry for everybody on Monday.

When she was canning the fruits and veggies were brought to the house in bushel baskets and we had to continually tote the baskets in to grandma and take the 5gal bucket she used to catch the peelings and veggie trimmings and dump that in the hog lot.

When it was time to start preparing lunch Grandma would hand us a basket and tell us to get potatoes, so we headed out the back door, grabbed a hoe and headed to the potato patch where we dug a basket of potatoes. When we got back to the kitchen she handed us a basket and a paring knife and told us to go out in the garden and get leaf lettuce, onions & veggies (whatever was in season at the time). When we got back to the kitchen we had to clean, peel and prep the veggies under her supervision, while she continued working on what she was canning.

We had two huge chest type deep freezers and in the fall we would slaughter 2 or 3 huge 900lb hogs, (I bet you guys have never seen a 60lb ham), a couple sheep, and at least two yearling steers, which then had to be cut up and wrapped for the freezer or hung in the smokehouse.

When grandma wanted to make chicken we had to go catch the chicken, kill it, then clean & dress it and for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas we had to catch and dress a couple geese or ducks. (The first time I ever tasted turkey was after I went in the Air Force).

In the winter we hunted racoons for their hides, but more often than not, a racoon or two ended up in the stew pot..as well as rabbits and pheasants. (We didn't have any deer on our farm).

In addition to her veggie garden, Grandma had a huge herb garden and she was an undisputed master with herbs and spices. In summer it was fresh herbs but by fall we had to cut them and air dry them for winter and in the evenings after all our chores in the barn were done we used to sit around the kitchen drinking hot chocolate and coring and slicing apples, which we threaded on a string and hung across the kitchen ceiling to dry for winter stores.

To this day I can still remember my Grandmothers weekly shopping list for the grocery store.
50lbs of flour, 25lbs of sugar, 3lbs of brown sugar, two large canisters of Quaker rolled oats, 5lbs of raisins, a gallon bucket of peanut butter (peanut butter used to be packed in 1 gal pails and grandma kept the empty pails for berry picking buckets for the kids), 8 packs of chewing tobacco for Grandpa and two boxes of arm & hammer baking soda and once in a great while she would buy 5lbs of whitefish fillets.

At the time I didn't really think about cooking much, but over the years I have known a lot of guys who didn't have a clue how to cook and when they ended up divorced it was pizza or hot dogs and porky beans ( I couldn't live like that).

Ladies, if you accomplish nothing else in this life, teach your children & grandchildren how to cook. Sometimes Jan laughs at me, but she knows, I don't need a menu plan. I walk in the kitchen and look around at what ingredients we have to work with, and I can turn out a gourmet meal every time. I may not have much money, but you can bet I eat good.

I started with DGD this week, she's 2 now, and can reach the table - so she learned to set out the silverware and napkins. A little crooked - but she was sooo proud.

Also pulled up a stool for her to do some (supervised,of course) stirring pots. She was sooo proud after the first time, she now drags the stool over to the counter when I start cooking.

I can still remember my first "job" helping grandmom do Thanksgiving dinner - making the toast for the stuffing.

I learned some from my grandmother and a whole list of people that I would go to church with, work with, etc. etc. If it tasted good, I would go to that person and talk to them, inquire everything about that recipe...and ask if they would bring it to me, if they didn't, I would hunt them down and keep pestering them. LOL...I love to cook, but I rely on other peoples recipes. I don't think I am such a good cook, but gosh I really love it and try.

I should add my older sister's experience to this discussion. As I said, I was 12 when my mother died, and my older sister was 16. We all pitched in to make meals, but eventually she learned enough to be in charge till she married 4 years later. Then I was in charge of the cooking.

When she married her college sweetheart at 20, she headed off to Texas where he was in the Air Force officer training. She lived in base housing, and with all the other young wives, got involved socializing and playing afternoon bridge. She discovered that all the newly arrived officer training wives were also newly weds, and they did not know how to cook. So she conducted cooking lessons at the base there from what she had learned watching mom and learning to be the cook for our family.

From taking home ec in jr high and high school and from reading cookbooks when I was out on my own. Friends would give me recipes and advice about cooking some things. My mom wouldn't allow me to cook when I lived at home. In later years she said she had been afraid I would cook better than she did. Baking is my favorite thing but I am a pretty good cook.

Watching others mostly. I learned different shortcuts and technique from cookbooks.

My dad was an excellent cook. My mom was a decent everyday cook but he was the one who knew how to pick the best cut of beef,how and what to roast,braise and BBQ.

Cooking is Science. It's simply fats,sugars and proteins reacting to various methods and timing of heat and humidity. Once you understand those basics it is something anyone can learn to do well just by doing and experimentation.

The first thing I learned to make on a stove was a grilled cheese sandwich. The second thing I learned to make was a bacon omelet. I used cast iron skillets for both (that's all we had) and prefer them to this day although I have stainless in my kitchen also. My parents didn't have fancy cookware. Cast iron skillets, uninsulated stainless steel soup pot and a couple of Farberwares and Reveres along with some Pyrexware and later some Corningware.

Today it seems everyone is looking for the special pot or appliance that will make them it good cook. It won't. The so called "professional" lines of cookware are anything buy t. You won't find that stuff in a real chef's kitchen. Bakeries don't use non stick pans. Restaurants don't use non stick griddles and pans either.

I got flamed on the appliance forum once for a post I made about bacon. Some idiot was complaining his/her very expensive ventilation hood was not working well because his bacon still spattered all over. I advised the person to turn down the heat. LOL OMG did that comment piss people off.

After all generations managed to fry bacon without long before kitchens had any type of ventilation other than windows.