How the Dragonslayer Taught Me to Cook
Christi HymelShare
I don’t know about you, but there are times when I feel overwhelmed with all the things coming at me…my duty as wife and mother, as friend and advocate, as a pilgrim on the journey to the Celestial City. Sometimes it just seems too much. When life gets hurried and hectic, I find myself longing to be alone in my kitchen creating something wonderful for my family and myself. In all honesty, I did not always have a great relationship with my kitchen or cooking. My mother was an excellent cook. In fact, when my 4 siblings and I get together every once in a blue moon, we often reminisce over the meals she was especially great at cooking. To this day, none of us can duplicate her fried chicken. For my brother it is her chicken curry dish which makes my mouth water just thinking about. But alas she died at the young age of 60 when I was only 24 and hadn’t yet appreciated the place the kitchen or cooking was to occupy in my life. Growing up in Texas we were not especially focused on food. We pretty much ate to live. The evening meal was the most important meal of the day and always, ALWAYS, included a meat and “three veg.” The “three veg” were usually some kind of potatoes, a casserole of some sort, and green beans or collard greens. We seldom deviated from this standard fare. The only exceptions were the holidays. Then my mother and her 4 sisters and 1 beloved sister-in-law would gather in the kitchen to create dishes that I’m sure will be the very meals that greet us once we get to heaven. But daily meals, the cooking of meals, and the place those would become in my life all changed when I met the Dragonslayer. He was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana- what I now call Gastronomic Disneyland. The Dragonslayer introduced me to the idea of “living to eat” and to foods I had never heard of before (this involved learning Cajun!) like crawfish etouffee, shrimp creole, and literally everything smothered in some kind of French sauce. (This is where I have to now add that I never really had a weight problem before meeting the Dragonslayer. All that changed after he taught me how to eat, what to eat and most importantly how to cook it.) Now I was fascinated by all the possibilities that could come from the kitchen. I began watching cooking shows, subscribing to Louisiana Cooking and other obscure cooking magazines, all in the hopes of being able to reproduce his favorite foods. To say he was patient with my efforts is an understatement. One of the reasons I decided to create Other Eden was to have a place to collect and share good recipes- many of my own, many of the tried and true, and lots of great recipes people have handed down to me over the years. My cookbook collection almost rivals my regular book collection. When we moved into our now not so new house, I had the kitchen remodeled to include a bookcase just for cookbooks. I am now a true “foodie”. I love to cook, bake, experiment with flavors, try hard things just to laugh when they don’t work out. But most importantly, I love that food and cooking are a priority in my life. I can think of no better way to display love to our family and friends than through a beautifully prepare meal. “Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not all” said Harriet Van Horne. Hopefully we can share our favorite recipes, our humorous disasters and most importantly the beautiful memories we create around our tables.