Joining a meal service was a pain in the leg, literally.
My mother taught home economics at my middle school, Samson G. Smith in Somerset, NJ. Originally defined as classes where students learned how to cook, do taxes, and perform child care tasks, she stuck mainly to food prep and meal planning.
Mom subbed for the regular teacher when I was in seventh grade and announced over the summer, “Mrs. Beck is going on maternity leave next year. If you want to take home ec with her, you have to do it in the fall. Otherwise, you’ll be my student in the spring.”
Not wanting to risk the subliminal slip of “Mom” for “Mrs. Cohen,” I opted to watch in pubescent wonder as the thin as a pin Mrs. Beck transformed over the first few months of school, expanding from pants to long skirts to flowing maternity dresses.
In the afternoons, I would come home and cook myself a grilled cheese sandwich or bake cookies (attempting to hide some of them from my three younger brothers).
When it came to the basics, I was developing the building blocks of an amateur-level chef. There were a few cooking programs on television and the morning shows were limited to an occasional holiday kitchen segment. The era of the celebrity chef had yet to occur, let alone the advent of an entire Food Network.
