My mother is a horrible cook, and she will be the first to admit it. The problem is that she often cooked everything from scratch, so on the rare occasions that we had a TV dinner or something that was pre-packaged - those nights were second only to when we got takeout. My stepmother is a good cook, and the time I spent at my father's house, home cooked meals were always enjoyable, although they always had a habit of eating out frequently (they still do, just not as much as when I was young).

Needless to say, since I lived with my mother, I took an interest in cooking at a young age. This was welcomed by my mother, because being a latch-key kid who looked after a younger sibling, not having to cook dinner made things easier on my mother, too. Now, as an older-than-I-like-to-admit adult, I do most of the cooking and it is rarely anything but made from scratch. On nights where I am pressed for time, I might get a rotisserie chicken and, yes, I still keep the odd box of Salisbury steaks in the freezer should I need to put something together quickly.

What I find interesting is that I tend to make the same things that my mother gravitated towards making, although obviously not the way she made them. I'll make a way-too-big pot of sauce for a spaghetti night and also put together a ziti or lasagna straight to the freezer for another night. Also, I like making "real" Salisbury steaks, although we do not eat beef that much, anymore, due to how ridiculously priced it has become. Stroganoff is a big hit with the wife, so that one is a fairly regular one (often using mushrooms instead of meat and not coming from a box mix, like my childhood). My mother is a big crock pot advocate, and I do not use one as much, but regularly make pot roasts and chili, preferring to do both in a Dutch oven.

There are two things that my mother cooked well, specifically, that I still make today. The first is a cream of potato soup, with a recipe that came directly from her grandmother, who was an Irish immigrant in the 1910s. The second is haluski, which is basically buttered egg noodles with fried cabbage and onions. I have no idea how that entered the family's menu choices, as we do not have any central European ancestry (although we had a fair number of Polish neighbors). That one is also a hit (and my father asks me to make it when they visit). It is even better the second day, when you take the whole thing and pan fry it in butter until the noodles start to turn golden. Haluski is a very rare meal for me today, especially the leftover version, since I tend to eat much healthier than that.