My cooking skills

This story helps a little bit to smile and also to learn how to do it better.

My first attempt, when I was alone at home in my youth – in the 70s – was scrambled eggs. I had often watched my mother and thought that it was very easy. Put some eggs in the pan and stir. Add some salt. What I had overlooked was putting some oil or margarine in beforehand.
This made stirring a bit difficult and then also getting it out of the pan. I ate it anyway. Hunger is the best cook.

I lived alone as a bachelor for a few years and had learned quite a bit. My favorite meal in the evening after work – because it was quick and easy – raw potatoes, cut into small pieces, roasted with eggs and fried sausage.

I had almost no experience with rice. This lead to a somehow problematic situation when I was living in the USA in the 1980s. I was once supposed to cook rice for dinner for my friends with whom I lived together. I took a large pot, filled it with water and rice and waited for it to boil.

The rice grew more and more until the pot became too small. It ended up being 3 pots. The rice in the first pot burned quite a bit. Some of my friends were Japanese and luckily they were experts at cooking rice. They helped me when they got home to save what could still be saved.
They were very good friends, very understanding and forgiving, but I never had to cook rice for my friends after that!

Luckily there is a happy ending in this story, now after the turn of the millennium!

My Spanish wife Julia cooks, excellent and the whole family loves it. Julia’s favorite pastry is “Apfelstrudel”, which she came to know in Vienna. Fortunately, you don’t have to prepare the dough yourself, you can buy it ready-made.

Sometimes she makes one, sometimes I do, our kids love both ways. That pleases me immensely. We don’t cut the apples, we grate them, which makes the “Apfelstrudel” finer. Some honey instead of sugar, a bit of lemon, grated almonds and of course cinnamon. Everyone likes this Sunday dessert.