The turning point came after yet another meal from the Blue Box.  I thought I could descend no further in my culinary fall from grace than the college dining hall food.  I was wrong.  As wrong as only a theater techie living in a decrepit Kentucky coal mining country single-wide trailer could prove to be.  Starving for your art shouldn't mean living with rats the size of Newfoundland puppies who had hooked up their own stolen cable.  It shouldn't mean driving a Deathwish ‘73 Pinto no one would insure.   It certainly shouldn't mean that I had to eat food even the sub-trailer rats wouldn’t eat.  Finally, after three seasons of summer music theater and of only being able to afford the incredibly cheap macaroni and powdered processed cheese I vowed, Scarlett-like with my bitter radish Blue Box clenched in my fist, NO MORE.  Neither me nor my people would be so hungry as to feel the need to eat Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ever again.

It was that hot, humid summer that I knew that, short of moving back into my parents' home, I would have to learn how to cook food well.  Not just subsistence cooking but to try to cook like my mother, like her mother and like all their mothers before them.  I love my parents but I am not an Italian mommy’s boy, living at home off the fat of mama’s hog.  No, being a young American woman, no amount of home cooking could lure me back into the boa-like coils of the family womb.  While freedom itself tasted sweet, it could taste a whole lot better.

I had to start simply with my mother’s cooking.  The oldest of eight Virginia farm kids, she learned early the rhythms and patterns of seasonal southern farm cooking.  Her repertoire was wide and deep, her competition fierce from her three sisters and mother, all taking pride in their pies, their biscuits, their ways with the pig, their love affair with the crust of a well fried chicken.  Uncomfortable and longing for home cooking, I stumbled toward the shelter of that wonderful dish that the outside world had reduced to a Blue Box. I was determined to recreate my mother’s macaroni and cheese.

A simple dish that starts off with a béchamel sauce (tricking you into making one of the French mother sauces), melted cheese, elbow macaroni, some spices and a buttered crumb topping.  I practiced.  I burned.  Much macaroni gave up its life for my quest.  But it eventually happened.  A panko and bacon topped mac and cheese my mom would be proud to call her own.  That simple dish spurred me on to new culinary adventures. Delicious Chả giò found a home in my kitchen.  Seasons and ingredients continue to inspire me while flavors and spices challenge me.  Turning the tide against the Blue Box armies of the world is a hard fought battle but one certainly worth the fight.  Won’t you join me?