Cooking Vacation
Since I was a young girl I have taken an interest in cooking. I am the youngest in my family so from the time I was twelve years old I was alone with my parents. I arrived home from school about an hour before my mom and dad came home from work. When I arrived home from school I would set the table for dinner and then do my home work. When mom and dad came home I would talk with my mom and help her make dinner. Soon I was getting dinner started on my own and before long I was preparing most of the evening meals. I love to cook and enjoyed creating meals for the three of us. I was in 4-H and my favorite project was the cooking classes.
As I got older my love of cooking continued. I started collecting cookbooks and would watch cooking shows whenever they were on television. It was an advertisement during one of the cooking shows that I first found out that you can take a cooking vacation. I pointed out the advertisement to my husband one day when we were watching one of my favorite shows. That Christmas he paid for a cooking vacation for me. It was one of the best gifts I ever received.
The first cooking vacation I went on was held in Minneapolis. Minneapolis is the hub for General mills. They have a huge building that houses the test kitchens for their various products. The cooking vacation involved spending four days making recipes that would be placed in a cookbook. People from all over the United States participated. We were given a recipe and the ingredients. We were to make the recipe and then fill out a survey regarding ease of preparation, clarity of instructions and time of preparation. Then we would all taste test the various recipes for our meals and rate them. All the recipes featured General Mills products. The recipes had already been tested by employees of General Mills, but the purpose of the cooking vacation was to discover if the average person would get good results making the different dishes. It was great fun and I also learned a great deal about preparing food. I made several new friends over the course of the four days. One woman and I decided that we would take another cooking vacation together.
This woman lives over a thousand miles from me. We call and email each other several times each week. We have taken many cooking related courses together and are going on another cooking vacation this year. My friends think I am crazy to spend vacation time in a kitchen, but I greatly enjoy trying out new recipes and improving my cooking skills.
