I can cook... from Nanette Lee Dolan nee Dungey

I can cook, thanks to Mom!

What I really got from Mother, other than indoor bare feet and the like, was the ability and love of cooking. Obviously, I did not inherit it, but she instilled it in me from before I can remember. The summer before I started 6th grade (or maybe 7th, but I think it was 6th), she had me make dinner every Thursday. In fact, one Thursday, I was at the creek swimming and talking with a neighborhood friend and her mother, when I suddenly jumped up and said that I had to go cook supper. The mother wanted to know more, and I explained that Mom was teaching me to cook and making me fix dinner every Thursday. That neighbor woman was very impressed, but I don’t know if my friend ended up having to learn to cook as well.

Mother’s emphasis on my learning to cook led to one of my outstanding moments in the first few months of John’s and my marriage. I was going to school during the day, and he worked the second shift, so we didn’t see much of each other before the weekends. One Friday, I decided to bake some bread because I like homemade bread and I wanted to surprise John. When he came home, he sniffed the air and said, “What’s that? It smells like bread.” I responded that it was bread baking. I’m not sure that he heard me because he went into the kitchen, looked in the oven, and came back to say, “There’s bread in the oven. You can cook!” I said, “Of course, I can cook. I cooked for you before we got married.” John’s response was, “I thought that you were just cooking things you knew how to cook well to impress me. You can bake bread! You can cook!”

All my cooking skill starts with Mother. Thank you, Mom, from all of us in North Carolina for the fact that I can cook. I love you.
Happy 80th Birthday to Mom!

Nanette