My love for cooking began at a young age and I distinctly recall the first things I learned to cook were French toast and scrambled eggs. This felt like such an accomplishment in fact that my parents were awoken to impromptu French toast and scrambled eggs for many weekends to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was a kid, dinners were not over complicated but most of the time they were cooked at home. The usuals were spaghetti, taco salads, meatloaf, etc. It was also a common occurrence that we would have a neighbor stop by and they wound up staying for the meal because there was always enough to share. This was modeled over and over for me and I think that is where I began to associate feeding other people<\/em> with caring for them<\/em> and loving them.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n We would drive to visit my grandparents in Arkansas once a month to help with their blueberry farm throughout the year. One time, on our way back we found a seafood market that looked like a gas station had a glow up. My parents then had this crazy idea to buy live crawfish and bring them home to do a boil. I’m not sure if my Mom just felt really inspired by her late night viewings of Emeril Lagasse or what but we loaded up coolers of those crazy critters and did just that. It actually turned into a short term event on our street and all were welcome. We covered our dining room table in newspaper and my dad used his giant outdoor turkey fryer to do the heavy lifting. This was where I began to see that food could also mean community<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In my college years, knowing how to cook served me well. I got the privilege of using that to serve others, whether it was at the Methodist student center weekly lunches or just in the house that my husband (boyfriend at the time) shared with his two roommates. Knowledge about food brought familiarity and even safety when the academic fatigue caught up with me. I changed my major to Culinary and Human Environmental Sciences in the middle of my sophomore year and that is what my earned Bachelor’s degree is in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My love for cooking has been a transformative and ever present component of my life. In my working-mom era now, I find myself falling into rhythms similar to what I remember my Mom having during my early years. While I didn’t think much of those meals at the time, it wasn’t until I got older and realized that not everyone grew up with a parent who could or even wanted to cook. Some days I want to cook a meal, other days, I simply want to combine a few things I have laying around the kitchen and just feed my family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If that last part sounds like you, then come along!<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Cat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My love for cooking began at a young age and I distinctly recall the first things I learned to cook were French toast and scrambled eggs. This felt like such an accomplishment in fact that my parents were awoken to impromptu French toast and scrambled eggs for many weekends to follow. When I was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-94","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catpmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}