LenaBeena

I recently attended, with several friends, a cooking demonstration at our little rural church. We are all in our 70's and have been cooking for many years but still interested in learning new things. Well, seems we are hopelessly old fashioned. At least that is what we were told.

All of the foods we sampled were very spicy. All the recipes included garlic, hot peppers, Indian curries, Cajun spices, plenty of salt and other tongue tingling things. The young ladies liked them but we had to scrape the coatings off before we could eat them. When we mentioned we liked our foods more naturally cooked without added flavors we were told we were way behind the times and, get this, older people have to eat very spicy foods because our taste buds are nearly gone! Well, to each her own of course, but don't tell me about my taste buds!

Then came the cooking helps. Did you know you can use your cappacino machine part that makes frothy milk to scramble eggs and your paper shredder to cut pasta? Neither did I. I just use a fork to stir and a sharp knife to cut.

Best part is when we were told how to actually grow our own foods! Just buy special plants, put them in special soil you buy, in a special container you buy, under a special grow light you buy, wear special plastic gloves you buy, fertilize with special packages you buy, pick when ripe and wash in a special cleaner you buy, and eat. When they said it was so "organic" we nearly lost it. We all grew up and still live on farms, have gardened all our lives using dirt and manure and no plastic gloves, and canned and froze many, many foods to feed our families for years and years.

After another hour of such help we left, thanked the presenters profusely, and continued to do things our old fashioned ways.

Like I said, you are never too old to learn!