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Closing Reflection
Overall, my experience in cooking with my mom has been quite an enjoyable one and I am very glad that this is what I decided to do. After thinking that neither cooking or shopping was really that important to me at this stage in my life, I was proved to be very wrong. I did not realize how much effort and preparing went into meals and now have a greater appreciation for those that cook home-made meals for their families, especially my mother.
Comparing the way that we cooked and prepared for this Thanksgiving versus the way that I cook for myself at school is pretty embarrassing. Although, now that I am more prepared for what it takes to cook a meal; I now feel more confident to be able to go to the grocery store, pick out the things that I need and come back to my apartment and create a really appetizing meal for myself.
I feel that it would be very beneficial if everyone just hopped in someone else’s shoes for a day and see what they had to go through because I would've never thought of cooking as something so intense. I also believe that this is the exact reason women’s jobs have been devalued so much overtime. People nowadays only worry about themselves and if they don’t have to do something, they won’t even think about it. Through my experience, this has been the biggest eye-opener, you can’t assume something until you’ve actually tried that despite how easy or simple it may seem.
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This is only a glimpse of what needed to be cleaned.
One attribute of cooking that I believe many people overlook is the cleaning process. Many households in society see the woman as the “maid” of the house overlooking tasks such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. However, those people don’t know how much time and effort are being put into these tasks because they’ve never had to do these tasks themselves.
Because we already have a family of five and had our grandparents visiting, the cleanup process was a little lengthy. We had food that fell on the floor during transport from the kitchen to the dining room table, as well as food on the table itself.
We started with cleaning up the appetizers that were placed out such as crackers and cheese, and rinsing off the little plates and putting them in the dishwasher. Deciding to put the dishes from this part of the meal into the dishwasher was a good move because we knew we would be getting more after dinner and dessert. At this point though, we were not really concerned with the mess in the kitchen.
Next, we cleaned up after the main course was out. This required us putting left-overs in Tupperware, and deciding what was not worth saving and throwing out. Also at this point, we were able to clean the kitchen more because we knew that our guests were full at this point and would need a little bit of a longer break until we brought out the desserts. We also rinsed everyone’s dishes and utensils off before putting them in the dishwasher and pressing start to begin the wash. Everything that was leftover from the meal that we decided to keep in containers was then put into the refrigerator so that it could be preserved for the next couple of days that we wanted to eat. I also helped my mother clean up the kitchen floor with a Swiffer because there were sauce and crumbs all over.
Given the amount of time that was taken to clean up after dinner, we were now ready to place all of the desserts out. For the most part, this was the easiest section to clean up because nothing had to be put in the refrigerator after; my grandparents wanted to take the rest home! We were lucky that we were left with the pie afterward though, so we also put that in another Tupperware and made room for it in the refrigerator as well.
With these plates, since the dishwasher was already full and running with previous plates and utensils used for the appetizers and dinner, we just rinsed them off and put them in the sink to later be put in the dishwasher as the next load. Other than cleaning up after meals, the rest was not that difficult. It was time-consuming and frustrating when I wanted to be relaxing, but after being brought to the attention of just how much my mother does in between cooking and shopping, I needed to help out.
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Although I'm not a huge fan of a lot of foods, it got me thinking about something as to why cooking, in general, has been so devalued. I thought back in the past of how when I didn’t like something I ate I totally negated the time and effort that went into it because I felt that since I wasn’t eating it that it didn’t matter. I think that this can play into other peoples’ perceptions of cooking if they share this same idea.
Now we can’t just have one dip at the feast so my mom recommended that we make some Knorr Spinach Dip. When I’m eating I tend to stay away from greens and fruits just because I am a super picky eater.
The process for making spinach dip was pretty easy and straightforward, starting off with adding 16 ounces of sour cream and 1 cup of mayonnaise into a bowl and mixing. This was then followed by adding a packet of Knorr Vegetable Recipe Mix with 10 ounces of spinach cooked and squeezed dry.
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A very popular item at the dining table this Thanksgiving was buffalo chicken dip, which seems to have become just very popular recently. My family is a big fan of buff chicken dip so it makes sense why it would be present at Thanksgiving. My sister introduced this dip to my family about a year ago and, as she typically does, my mother picked it up right away and started making it for the family so my sister wouldn’t have to.
Although it isn’t a super complicated dish, it quite a tasty one. My mother and I started by preheating the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. adding 2 cans of chicken (drained) into a dish with Red’s Hot Buffalo hot sauce mixed throughout. We spread it out as the first layer at the bottom. Next, we put a bowl of 8 ounces of cream cheese into the microwave to be heated up for an easier spread. This took about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Following taking the bowl out of the microwave, a quarter cup of ranch dressing was added to be mixed with the warm cream cheese. Once completely mixed throughout, we spread that as the second layer on top of the chicken and hot sauce layer. The next step that we took was grabbing the bag of Mexican Mix Shredded Cheese. There was no precise way that we could measure out how much we used, so we made our measurements by making sure that the cheese-covered the white color of the cream cheese as best we could. In addition to this, we added some more of Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo sauce just by drizzling it in a zig-zag motion over the finished product. (I put that shit on everything).
When our dip was finally ready to be put in the oven, we left it in for about 10-15 minutes or until the top starts to sizzle and bubble. Depending on how your taste-buds are with heat is how long you could leave it out for, but my mother and I would not recommend leaving it sitting for more than 5 minutes before enjoying it because it will start to get cold quickly. For our Thanksgiving, we just took it out and immediately set it on the table. This dish is a great addition to every event and everyone seems to love it whenever it’s out.
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The next item that my mother and I chose to make was pie. This was a little bit more tricky as it contained a few different steps in comparison to the easy and typical chocolate chip cookie recipe.
We decided to go with classic apple pie, in addition to the fact that it is my dad’s favorite type of pie to eat. We began by making the dough by hand by whisking together 2 ½ cups of all-purpose flour, 4 teaspoons of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of salt. We then used our fingers to work the 14 tablespoons of butter into the ingredients until the colors started to look a little more yellow than white. My mother told me that we needed to refrigerate what we had so far for 10 minutes before we moved on to the next step. We then added 1 large egg with 2 tablespoons of water and stirred again by hand. We then formed the dough into a disk shape, wrapped it in plastic wrap and left it in the fridge again for another hour until we proceeded.
While waiting for the hour to pass, we made the filling for the pie. We put 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice into a medium bowl. Followed by this we peeled, cored and halved 3 pounds of Golden Delicious apples into wedges. After putting the apples into the bowl with the lemon juice, we added ⅔ cup of sugar to the mix as well.
In a large skillet, we melted ¼ cup of butter over medium-high heat. We then added the filling and included ¼ teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. My mom told me that we had to stir until the sugar dissolves, and then let it simmer in the skillet for 2 minutes before doing anything else. We then stirred on and off for about 7 minutes.
After the allotted time passed, we strained the apples in a colander over a medium bowl to collect all of the excess juice. With what was collected, we put back into the skillet until the juice was thickened and lightly caramelized, which took about 10 minutes. Following waiting, we mixed this new thick substance with the apples which were drained, and begin to work on the dough to create the shape and setting we needed for the filling.
To begin, we sliced the dough in half to create two discs of dough. We then lined the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan with one of the discs and tripped it so that it laid about ½ inch beyond the edge of the pan. My mom then put the filling on top of this layer of dough, and mound it near the center. Next, we cracked another egg in which we brushed the top edges of the dough before setting the other disk of dough on top of everything. We folded that second layer of dough under the edge of the bottom layer and pressed the edges together to create a firm seal. After brushing the surface of the dough with egg again, we sprinkled sugar over it all. We also had to make sure to poke holes around the top of the pie to allow the steam forming inside to escape while it baked.
We refrigerated the pie for at least 15 minutes to settle all of the ingredients before putting it in the oven. At 375 degrees, the oven was ready to cook us the best pie ever made because I had helped, of course.
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The first item of food that my mother and I decided to cook was cookies. Homemade chocolate cookies are a staple for my family, holiday or not. Although I have made cookies with my mom in the past, I’ve never really studied the process and ingredients in the slightest. To begin, we started off with adding 2 ¼ cups of flour into a good-sized bowl for mixing. The next step of the process was to add 1 teaspoon of baking soda as well as 1 teaspoon of salt. My mom explained to me that it’s important not to overdo the salt or else the cookies will obviously be too salty. We then added 1 cup of butter to the not so great looking mixture. Next, it was time for the sweets, we added ¾ cup of granulated sugar as well as ¾ cup of brown sugar with an additional teaspoon of vanilla extract. In addition to adding the ingredients, it was also necessary to constantly mix everything which becomes more and more difficult as the mixture gets more and more viscous. We then added 2 large eggs and, the most essential part, 2 cups of chocolate chips. All of this meal prep probably took us about 10 minutes but it wasn’t difficult because my mom makes cookies for us all the time. As much as my sister would love to eat all the cookies dough we put the cookies on a tray and then in the oven at 375 degrees for about another 10 minutes. My mom explained to me how it’s really important to keep checking on the cookies a few minutes before the 10-minute mark because of how they can easily burn and essentially become worthless.
I can easily see how someone couldn’t appreciate some cookies that their mom made, as I have been there before also. However, through my simple experience of just cooking cookies with my mom, I have a newfound appreciation for my mom’s cookies. There really is a lot of love that can goes into these simple treats. Despite me being appreciative of my mother’s sweets, the rest of my family acted the same I had before. They may say thank you or wow these cookies are good but they truly don’t understand the process involved as well as the thought and care that go into cooking. What I mean by this is that you may complement a meal for its taste or looks but you can never thank the person for the process unless you were there making them.
I believe that women cooking, what are considered by many, “easy” foods is most definitely devalued by the rest of society. As I explained earlier, I believe this is mainly because of how people are just showing up to the destination without the journey but I think there is more to it than that. I think that a lot of males would be embarrassed to be baking cookies because of the feminine aura that is surrounded by “baking cookies”. Although I wouldn’t be running around telling people I baked cookies, I also wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell people how I took some time out of my day to bake some chocolate chip cookies with my mom.
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Progress Reflection/Shopping Experience
Through this simple yet mind-opening experience, I have found new gratefulness in the simple things that my mother does that I typically don’t think about much. I wouldn’t say that my mom de-values going to the grocery store but thinks more of it as just something that has to be done and she gets it done rather well. I think that grocery shopping and cooking, in general, have been devalued because it is not something that many people do regularly. What I mean by this is that people can’t appreciate someone else doing something unless they have put the time and effort into that task themselves. This is exactly what occurred to me as my mom and I finally made it to the cash register because I knew that if my mom hadn’t been there, I still would be in the grocery shop right now trying to find stuffing.
For this project, I decided that cooking with my mom would be a great activity to pursue. The reason I chose cooking was that I felt that it is very normalized in today’s society that mothers typically cook in the household. My mother has cooked for me my entire life and I have always taken it for granted, but since I’ve been at school and my mother isn’t cooking for me anymore, I’ve really been able to experience how much time and effort can be put into a simple meal. I felt that Thanksgiving dinner would give me the greatest chance to experience all of the emotions and effort that goes into cooking a large meal for multiple people.
When we first walked into the food store my mom told me to grab one of those price scanner guns that I’m sure we’ve all seen at the grocery store and completely avoided because it was just foreign to us. To my surprise, shopping with the price gun was much easier and simpler than just regular shopping but I’ll come back to that later. My mom had a full list of what we needed to get and we had a mission at hand.
This time around food shopping was a little different, I was actively involved with my mom pushing the cart around and finding food items for my mom. Typically, at school, when I go food shopping I walk up and down every aisle just to make sure I don’t overlook anything and also because I don’t know the location of any items that I am looking for. Not to my surprise, my mother knew where every single item was without even thinking, making shopping much easier.
My mother and I had an entire system right off the back. She would lead us to where the food items were and bring them to the cart I was pushing. This is then where I should shoot the items with the price scanner and organize them into the cart. My mom explained to me that when it came to checking out all we would have to do it just have the cashier scan the price scanner itself and that’s it, nothing else, no more spending an additional 30 minutes at the checkout line.
Originally, when I explained to my mom that I wanted to be apart of both Thanksgiving food shopping and cooking, she was surprised but excited. I always try to spend as much time with my family as possible, but my mom is always is happy to spend any extra time with me or my two other siblings. There would have been a lot of difficulty food shopping if I wasn’t with my mom. She knew the store like the back of her hand which made it a lot easier to get everything because it wasn’t like me food shopping at school, scouring each and every aisle because I still don’t know where anything is. In prior years, I would have definitely felt embarrassed going food shopping with my mom just out of fear seeing people but now that I’m almost 20 years old, I couldn’t care less about how other people view me, however, when I was younger I’m sure we all felt that little bit of embarrassment having to go food shopping with our moms.
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Bio of Coach
My coach for this project is my mother because of her vast experience in cooking and grocery shopping as it relates to this project. My mom has always been the cook of the house, providing me, my two siblings, and father food since I could remember. My mom took this task upon herself and typically all the cooking in the house is done by my mother. She also participates in the stereotypical feminine jobs around the house such as cleaning, laundry, etc. My siblings, my father and I have always been appreciative of everything my mother does around the house and it really does make all of our lives much easier. My dad does occasionally crack jokes about how my mother does the stereotypical house chores but it’s out of good faith and my mom gets a good laugh out of it.
My mom is very supportive and she loves spending time with any of her kids so when I brought up the idea of this project to her, she was more than excited. She started listing ideas of different things we could do as well organized when we would make what and when we would go shopping. She has always been very organized for events such as Thanksgiving or Christmas so it didn’t surprise me when she hit me with the gameplan.
I really feel that this project will help show my appreciation to my mother as well as get a better understanding of just how much she does for my family as well as myself, in addition to all of the great things she’s done for me as well as the opportunities she has given in in life. She has always been there for me and it’s nice to finally give at least a little something back to her, as well as it being really nice to know how much she appreciates it, and how excited she is.
My mom grew up around Scranton, PA and attended college at East Stroudsburg University, following her dream to be a teacher. She would sub and teach classes for a few years before marrying my dad, and not long after becoming pregnant with my sister. Once pregnant she still worked but began researching other jobs that she could partake in that would better fit the schedule of having kids because of my father's busy work schedule. She decided on Early Intervention for Sunny Days, where she was a therapist for those with disabilities for children aging from 0-4 years old.
After she had my sister and was finally beginning this new part of her life, she found out that she was pregnant with me. Originally, my parents and sister had lived in Flushing, Queens, NY, but after the news about me, they knew they needed a bigger home in a more suburb type area. They came across a town in northern New Jersey called Harrington Park. As soon as my family moved to New Jersey, my mom started going house to house for early intervention where she was able to have her own schedule so that she could be there for us while our dad was at work during the day.
Balancing work, kids, cooking, cleaning, and shopping is an insane task that I really have taken for granted up until this point. My mom gets it all done and all for the love of her family. On top of loving what she does, it helps her to be able to provide for us all while having a smile on her face which I think is pretty awesome. I do not know how she is able to follow through and wake up early every morning while completing all of these tasks, and while taking care of two dogs at home as well!
To conclude, these are the reasons why I chose my mother as my coach. My mom loves and takes care of all of her family members including pets and does it so well, so I wanted to learn from the best for this project.
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Initial Thoughts
Before I begin my project, cooking with my mom, I felt it would be important to go through my initial thoughts and feelings beforehand. I have always helped my mother with cooking here and there but I have never truly been “present” there while it was happening. By “present” I mean that I was never fully there paying attention and taking account into every detail and step that went on during cooking at all. My mother always cooks for us and it’s not something that I’ve ever thought twice about because that’s how things have always been.
In the past, I’ve never really wanted to cook just because it always seemed like a chore rather than something fun or enjoyable to do. However, when I first heard about the project I immediately thought of cooking because that is something that in my life, has always been done mainly by women. I was excited but also in a way nervous to go ahead and cook with my mom because that always her activity to do. I am excited to do this with her because I enjoy spending time with my mom and I feel that I can appreciate more of what she does by simply cooking with her. I am also slightly nervous because this is new something brand new to me and there is always that aura of uncertainty around new things for me.
I feel that this experience will be eye-opening in the unseen effort my mother has always put into and maybe provide answers as to why cooking is one of the many under-valued things that women do in our lives every day. Right now, I believe that a lot of time and care will be taken in cooking as it is something that when you mess up, the final project is completely ruined. What I mean by this is that when you cook, and you mess up in a more dramatic way, such as burning the food, it ruins the end product completely because nobody wants to eat something that has been simmered in an oven overdone, I also believe that minor tasks that are apart of cooking such as preparing the table or cleaning afterward will be more annoying and more demanding than I originally think they are.
However, before we could even cook, we had to go food shopping. I’ve gone food shopping with my mother before but never really paid any attention to what was going on because it never meant much to me besides the task just being in my mind “just go food shopping with mom, it will make her happy”.
Because I had not given the subject of my mother shopping and cooking much thought prior to this class, it occurred to me just how much I was unaware of the amount that my mother does for my family, let alone myself. I had started to realize the minimal amount of information I had about these subjects so I was also excited to learn more about them and to be able to apply what I learned for my future at the university without my mom there to cook and shop for me.
As for cooking, I have not had any real experience with making meals and baking. My mother would always do this for me while I waited to be called to the table. The only cooking that I have ever done was by putting something in the microwave which required a very minimal skill set. After being assigned this project, I began to really think about just how much effort goes into preparing a meal and cooking for others, and how I still had a lot to learn before going on my own into the world. I figured that there would not be too many ingredients, that it would not be that hard; only more time-consuming.
I have always had a good relationship with my mother, so I knew that she would be the most patient coach, as well as the best teacher.
Overall, I am excited to go into this experience as it will open my eyes to what my mother has to do on a daily basis to provide me, my two siblings, and dad a freshly cooked meal. Who knows, maybe I’ll find out I like something new that I never tried before.
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