Surfing Tomboy Learns to Cook with Love

I grew up labeled a “tomboy” because I loved to play kickball, dodgeball, and four-square really hard. I played with boys because there weren’t any girls who were interested in playing the way that I liked to play.

When I turned sixteen, I got a driver’s license, a car and independence. On non-school days, I woke up at seven in the morning and headed for the beach to go surfing. At that time, the kitchen was a merely a place to eat. I had no desire to prepare food. I guess that I thought if I would just ignore the domestic scene it would somehow disappear. I would show up five minutes before dinner and set the table. I might throw together a salad if my mother made me, and then help clean up. Remember, this was the early sixties, before the exciting days of the women’s liberation movement.

It wasn’t until I was about to get married, at twenty, to my first love that I figured out I was supposed to cook. Good wives were “supposed” to do that. Oh s--t, I hadn’t taken the time to learn how to cook. What was I going to do? Fortunately, someone gave me a Betty Crocker Cookbook for a wedding gift. I proceeded to learn, through trial and error, from recipes. Over the years, love was the most important ingredient I ever learned to include.

Today, I never made it out to the garden to finish digging the bed that I started the day before yesterday. However, before making dinner tonight I made naturally fermented Sauerkraut. I have been making Sauerkraut on and off for over twenty years. My favorite recipe has been inspired by Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions. How this recipe is different than the ones that I had prepared in the past is that it includes whey (that comes from yogurt or kefir). I recommend this cookbook/cooking encyclopedia for anyone who is interested in learning how and why to prepare foods as our ancestors did.