Having children was the reason I learned to cook. I have ammassed a large collection of cookbooks. My go-tos are The Fannie Farmer and Silver Palate, my mother's staples. To those The Way to Cook by Julia Child was essential for teaching me the basics. After that it is a smorgabord of titles.

Hunger mostly, and boredom with the same-ole-same-ole inspired me to broaden my horizons so to speak.

I consider myself a grilling expert and will often cook 3 or 4 things on the grill at a time.

I don't have that many go-to recipes other than Asian dishes that I usually follow the recipe closely. I like to experiment with various recipes that I look up on the online sites.

Probably my mom. My mom taught HomeEc (cooking) for years at high school. I remember her telling me that there was a difference between teaching boys and girls and that is that girls followed the recipes to the exact recipe while boys used recipes as a guide and experimented with seasonings and ingredients. She found that teaching the boys was so much more fun So when cooking I use recipes as a guide, just for fun. The problem with this is that it's tough to duplicate a recipe.

I know that this is a small sample but just her experience.

However she also taught me that baking is often based on chemical reactions of the ingredients so be very careful about changing up those recipes. I'll add extra chocolate chips or cranberries in my cookies but beyond that I follow the recipe.

We were taught in school. My mom wasn't greatly interested in teaching/passing along domestic skills but once taught in "Home Ec." she allowed us to practise. After that well I had to eat! A bff from my first year teaching would make full dinners for herself and roommate. THAT seemed crazy but at the same time sooo much better than the easy cooks I was making for myself. Recipie reading is just not that difficult. Following directions not such a big deal. From pie to turkey dinner I have never understood the big deal. Easy peasy!!!

self taught

taught home ec for many years

I know people will laugh at this, but Rachael Ray and her 30-minute meals were my cooking primer. I always worked long hours at my job and never really learned to cook or took the time to make it a priority. The concept of 30-minute meals caught my eye on the Food Network while I was recovering from an illness. I learned some of the basic cooking techniques from that program and started making almost all of my meals from scratch.

Now, I still don't cook anything elaborate, nor do I have the well-developed cooking sense like so many of the cooks that post here do, but I'm comfortable in the kitchen and not afraid to follow a recipe.

My stomach and taste buds inspired me! I like to eat so I like to cook as well. I realize those two functions are not always mutual but they often have a strong influence on each other.

My mom was a decent cook but not overly creative so I started cooking at a young age and just kept at it. I did learn some ethnic dishes from her but mostly my cooking involved developing dishes that tasted the way I thought they ought to taste. So not a lot of reliance on cookbooks early on :-)

Since one can find any recipe under the sun online, I still do not rely heavily on cookbooks but the ones I favor are the Silver Palate series, Joy of Cooking, Martha Stewart, Ina Garten and a collection of regional Junior League or club recipe collections. Some really good stuff in those!!

I was taught to cook by my Grannie. She taught us all the basics from when we were very small. I had to stand on the piano stool to reach the very low counter. We started with cornbread. It was techniques mostly. I certainly couldn't read when I first learned. I very much enjoyed it. She taught us to judge and manage ingredients. I learned to cook measuring things in the palm of my hand, judging things by the feel. Since then I have just applied those principles to foods that interested me. I have basic recipes for things that require measurements like cakes. It is a rare food that needs to be so precise you write it down. It is more a with this group of ingredients you can make this dish. I have some basic cookbooks like Julia's Way to cook. Like I said, techniques and a Joy and an old Betty Crocker when you need precision for a basic recipe.

I don't really like to cook. I became a better cook because of the internet and having a family to feed.

My mom’s best friend, Kay and her husband, lived two houses down from us my entire childhood. Kay wasn’t able to have kids and so she took all nine of us under her wings and taught us how to cook. She was a fantastic cook, very creative! The first dish I made by myself, with her coaching me along was a beautiful, delicious Chocolate Mousse in a footed glass bowl lined with lady fingers (tall thin cookies) for a dinner party they were hosting later that evening. I’ve had a passion for cooking ever since. My latest inspiration for great new recipes is the online www.Halfbakedharvest.com

That gal is absolutely brillant!

Lots of good cooks in my family so I always presumed I’d cook, too. Mostly I cooked to feed myself and my family. My mom set a good example with her cooking. Nothing bery fancy but always wholesome,

My grandmother and my mother each taught me techniques and how to make a handful of things, so together perhaps 10 in total. Their preference and mine (whether by example or inclincation) is/was to find delicious dishes that maximize flavor and appearance and minimized steps and time required. I also watched Julia Child on TV in her early days, which provided inspiration to learn more. Her recipes are generally more lengthy than I prefer. My wife came from a family who were kitchen-challenged so she learned little pre-adulthood.

Dessert was not a regular feature for either of us growing up. Neither family had home dessert- making or eating practices and we don't either.

A gift with a title something like "The Science of Cooking" and then a subscription to Cooks Illustrated opened my curiosity some decades ago to learn techniques and what to do and not do with various preparations.

I retain that preference to this day. With Cooks Illustrated as well as its former staffer Kenji Lopez-Alt (who has become a prolific recipe developer and teacher), I like learning from iterative testing by experts and the results of same. I still avoid most labor-intensive or long, multi-step recipes other than to incorporate techniques and approaches that can be adapted with shortcuts. 15 minutes of active preparation is about my limit. We don't prefer just simple dishes but I'd rather eat something more complicated or off the beaten path prepared by a pro rather than learning to do it myself, so we eat out/get takeout regularly and buy dessert items irregularly when we want something.

What inspires me to cook? Hunger and boredom, with occasional curiosity. How did I learn to cook? A combination of watching others (my mother, our housekeeper, friends), cookbooks, and a half year cooking class in Jr. High. My mother gave me a Joy of Cooking when I was a teen, and it has a lot of information on cooking techniques, measuring, and substitutions in addition to recipes. Although my mother read a lot of cooking magazines and would find interesting recipes for dinner parties, I thought her specialty was making something great out of whatever she could find in the kitchen.

I rarely use recipes to cook (as opposed to bake), but I will sometimes look up a recipe to make something I have a particular craving for, or something I've bought that was not very good (thinking "surely I can make [whatever] better than this!). I don't always eat the same things, but the different ingredients, spices, proportions, etc are made up on the spot or planned by what I find in my kitchen. My recipe book is mostly filled with baking recipes, though there are some cooked dishes with complicated steps and spice pallets that I still need recipes for (like gumbo).

I cleaned out one of my old dry sinks yesterday and found a stack of cookbooks, mostly vegetarian and pasta ones. I did find a few Marthas and Joy Of Cooking which is a joke to me. I find no joy in it. My mother was a spectacular cook and attend a cooking seminar when she was first married. Of course, her food was what would be called old school now... recipes passed down from generations. Chicken and waffles, pot roast, pork roasts all given her special touch. What I am in awe of, we had our BIG meal at noon when my father walked home from his office and I came home from school. So she rolled out of bed and started her dinner at 8 in the morning. Supper was the light meal, usually leftovers. Always there was a homemade dessert, pie, cake, sticky buns , puddings, all homemade. Boggles my mind. It sure skipped a generation with me. My meals are so basic and limited because I haven't eaten meat in 40 years and neither have either kid although they had it as children.

Mom was a good basic cook and taught me the basics. Watching the Galloping Gourmet as a little kid made me believe cooking could be fun, but I was too young to do much about it. The Frugal Gourmet was popular when I was a young adult; DH and I got several of his cookbooks and expanded our basics quite a bit. I also found inspiration in Gourmet Magazine, and Justin Wilson's cajun cooking.

My inspiration is what do I have available and my mind. While I still have over a thousand cookbooks mostly purchased more for what they could inform me than for being used for what I make. I will try new things even if when I purchased them I had no idea what I was planning on using them for.

Books. There was a Little Golden Book about a French poodle named Pantaloon. He was a baker and made a large tiered pink cake. That image stayed with me for years. Later I started reading cookbooks.

So interesting reading people's stories - good topic nelliebean!

Definitely my mom first. She came from a family of highly competent cooks, let us help and experiment in the kitchen, and regularly cooked gourmet dinners for a sort of dinner club with friends, so we got to taste a lot of what was, at the time, rather exotic fare. My mom loved to entertain and feed people.

My parents had the entire Time/Life series of Foods of The World* books, and subscriptions to Gourmet and Bon Appetit. My parents also gave me cookbooks as gifts when I was young that I still have to this day.

I remember watching The French Chef and The Galloping Gourmet on TV as a kid. Graham Kerr was so funny 😃

When I was 14, my mom also arranged my first real job for me too - working in a crunchy hippie vegetarian restaurant, and at one point I was even the main cook until they found an adult to take over.

I think as a young adult in the 80s/90s, my main inspirations were Jacques Pepin and Martha Stewart. I regularly watched their shows, and had a subscription to Martha Stewart Living for years. I also read that entire series of Time/Life books, and the Larousse Gastronomique (also from my parents' cookbook shelf) around that time.

I've always liked to cook and bake, and I'm thankful my mom & dad encouraged me to do so.

* Fun fact: my cousin's hands were in some of the photographs in those Time/Life books. He was a fantastic chef and made a living helping restaurants get up and running, a.k.a. troubleshooting for new establishments.

My cousin's son is a chef. He won "Chopped" twice. He has no formal culinary training and credits his love of cooking to his grandmother, who was my Aunt Flo. He opened a restaurant, and the artwork that was hung on the wall were old photos of her and all of my aunts and my grandmother. That way, they were always looking over his shoulder. Angels?

My mother-in-law inspired my cooking style most of all. She was obese and really suffering from diabetes and heart problems. So were all her daughters. Though I loved her dearly, it really jolted me that what you decided to eat and cook could either make your quality of life good or awful. And we were just married. I was about to be cooking all the time. Staying with what my husband or I wanted didn't make as much sense as suddenly breaking away from the meat and starch standard. I went to a bookstore and got a cook book from the American Heart Association. When the USDA changed from a food pyramid to a food plate half filled with veges, I was locked into veges as the starting point of all meals. I have a lot of vege recipes but my go to is to steam those frozen packages when I'm tired. Sometimes that's all I have for supper. Not much of a fancy meal I guess, but veges are my favorite food, especially now that I'm getting older and sweets and starches make my body feel bad. I'm trying to retain muscle mass with proteins too ( yes, I exercise) and am learning which meat/fishe/egg dishes I like best with which veges. Salmon and peas, beef and beets, chicken and crucifers, pork and carrots, endless list... When I started planning around the meat, my mind went to what starch went well with each meat. But when I started with the vegetable, the meat ideas came, and stopped there...no starches. Still talking inspiration here...

If you have to like to eat to enjoy cooking, that could explain why I don't like to cook. There's nothing I want to eat enough that I'd spend hours preparing it and cleaning up afterwards. (I agree with Elmer on that.) Of course, being married longer than 50 years, and mother of a son, I have had to cook, and I've tried to make foods better than just 'edible'. DS married into a cooking family. He thought that was great...until he was expected to pitch in. Everybody likes a party when someone else is doing the work!

I started cooking as a child so that my sister would not get to choose what we were going to have. She loved to make Kraft mac & cheese, which I would not touch (and still won't), and so I would cook so that I could have what I did like. I'm still particular about what I will eat and still cook so that I can have what I like. It's not that I like cooking - it's that I like the results, and I will go to great lengths to achieve that.

Necessity. Newlywed on a budget that restricted eating out every day. Not that I would of wanted to. My mom's kitchen was small and was impossible to hold two cooks. So I only knew the very basics. So I had to learn how to cook to eat.

"Everybody likes a party when someone else is doing the work!"

Oh, how true. When your the only participant it's a drag. Hubby and I recently separated. I am enjoying cooking because i don't have to, but want to.

I wrote a bit on the other thread about inspiration from TV chefs, but my first inspiration to branch out from my mother’s very good meat and potatoes fare was a woman I babysat for. She loved to entertain and just had a flair for elevating the ordinary and preparing slightly unusual (to me) dishes. Things were thoughtfully presented, but not really fancy by today’s standard. I learned to expand my thinking about food and recipes from her. I like to imagine I may have inspired some younger people, too

I leaned to cook watching Mom and Dad (both of them liked cooking together and there really wasn't a space in the kitchen for a third wheel. I did bake cookies with Mom - Dad was not interested in sweets.

Going out on my own, I was inspired by both of them. Dad was mostly a seat of the pants cook, trying all sorts of new things. Mom had standard recipes she followed, but also tried new things - -- so I learned two different approaches to cooking. For a good portion of my childhood we lived in or near New York City, a grand place to explore, eat, and attempt to make a variety of cuisines from around the world. We originally hailed from Kentucky, which brought in "down home" foods as well.

My brother tells us he especially learned to cook from his first wife. Her idea of cooking was to open a can of Spaghetti-O;s - so he learned to cook in self-defense! (There are reasons he left her....)

I an glad I didn't have to take "Home-Ec" in school. The home food was so much more filled with flavors! (Now, I would have liked to have taken "Shop", were that offered to girls then. That was not a skill I I had any way of learning at home....)

" My brother tells us he especially learned to cook from his first wife. Her idea of cooking was to open a can of Spaghetti-O;s - so he learned to cook in self-defense! (There are reasons he left her....) "

Sounds like my sister-in-law, but my brother never learned to cook either. Their stove and oven were barely used in their 20+ years together. They ate cold (salads, sandwiches, cereal at breakfast), ate take out, or ate out for just about everything.

I liked my Home Ec classes in jr. high. We learned to make biscuits, chocolate pudding, and mac & cheese from scratch. I wish I could recall what else we cooked, but it was fun. We learned sewing, hygiene and grooming too, tho I'd already started sewing a lot earlier. My mom let us use her Singer Featherweight, and I remember making an apron when I was in 3rd grade.

I have always loved to cook. My mom did and does not. Food network first appeared when I was very young. I remember watching the Two Fat Ladies, fascinated. Not by the food, which looked odd, but by the sheer passion those two spoke of it. Jamie Olivers first cooking show, "The Naked Chef" also gripped my attention and sparked my imagination. To the point that when I very recently discovered that it was on FreeVee/Prime, I watched every episode and remembered every last bit of all of them. Then, Ina. OH how I love her. And Nigella Lawson. Love her too. Her food is often hit or miss, but her SHOWS were done in such an appealing way to me that I loved to watch her and her love for food, which fueled my own.

My mother was VERY happy to hand over cooking dinner duty to me at the age of ten or so. She supervised and reeled me in from trying things that she knew our family wouldn't like, but would occasionally let me try new dishes to serve. It wasn't really until, I hate to admit, my oldest sister got married and started hosting parties at her home that I was really allowed to experiment and branch out. She was also more than happy to let me destroy her kitchen to feed the masses of people she hosted while she stressed about the other details. ( I did help clean the messes I made, though she insisted it was not needed ,as I did basically cater all her holidays)

After all that, my holiday dishes and party food that I am famous for are much loved and set in stone. My new inspiration was cooking for my SO, who thinks about food differently than I do, and is used to different food than I was. So I had to learn his tastes and favorite foods, many of which were not even on my radar before we met. Traditional southern soul food, turns out, is not hard to make it just takes time and love. And while I certainly do not make a soul food feast daily, it was a journey to learn how he likes his "everyday" food I guess I would call it. Things like what does he like on his burger or pizza, what vegetables he likes and dislikes, what foods are an absolute "no" (mustard, pickles, sour cream, vinegar, spicy foods etc in his case) And what are his favorite flavors and how do I cook varied and delicious meals around them were my new inspiration. And it still is. I love feeding people.

The need to eat food. With flavour.

Most Canadians think salt and pepper are spices. LOL Kraft Dinner is a delicacy here. bwahahahaa! I don't eat it.

have a really hard time eating potlucks because it's almost all so bland.

I don't cook fancy meals, but I do cook flavourful meals.

My mom. She was the best cook I've known and could make anything.

My inspiration came from watching cooking shows like the Galloping Gourmet, although I Think I was born to eajoy feeding people. I also grew up with Jean pere’s books. She was a very inspirational woman.

.I don't think it’s fair to say that Canadian food is bland. I certainly use a lot of spices and other flavourings. I suppose though, what I make are usually my version of an international dish. ie, greek or italian. As far as KD goes, it has i’s place as far as I’m concerned. When you’re not feeling well, it’s a comfort thing and really economical too. Although even that has gone up a lot.

' I don't think it’s fair to say that Canadian food is bland. "

Maybe only if you live around people of British background? Or from a small town/rural area? If you're Canadian in a more multicultural part of the country, it's anything but bland and boring.

Find me a Canadian delicacy that is 100% Canadian that has tons of flavour: besides Ginger Beef, I love that stuff if cooked fresh. Maybe I need to try something new?

"100% Canadian"

What does that mean, and why isn't food that originated in another country but made for years by Canadians not Canadian enough? Ginger Beef isn't 100% Canadian, after all - it's a Chinese/Canadian blend, created by an immigrant from Hong Kong. Even the Nanaimo Bar recipe came from an American. I think Butter Tarts might be the only well known food that is - as far as I can tell - 100% Canadian. Maybe tourtiere too.

I don't think it’s fair to say that Canadian food is bland.

Toronto Vetrinarian, I was the one who posted that statement. I think it says what I meant is that I don’t agree that Canadian food is bland. I just wanted to clarify that.