My brother and I were always allowed in the kitchen when Mother was cooking, she taught us the basics. I really have never liked to cook, but I also allowed my children to cook or help when they were young and taught them as well. They both cooked along with my Mother when they visited with her which was all the time when they were growing up. Today they are excellent cooks. Both are single, and have to cook in order to eat. lol. My son has always enjoyed experimenting with cooking. My brother is a fabulous cook, I think his cooking came about mostly from necessity because neither of his two wives were great cooks. He did most of the cooking then and has been single for the last 15 years, so he has no choice but to cook for himself and others which he loves to do. I know that in order to be a good cook one must enjoy the process, which I don't.
My Mother had tons of recipes and the ones that were stained were the most used I guess. I kept all of her recipes and about years ago decided to share them with my children and a niece who was 4 when Mother died. I made copies of all of Mother's hand written and a few typed recipes, some of mine, my grandmothers and other folks. I retyped all of the hand written ones. I then put all in plastic sleeves with a copy of the original hand written recipes facing the ones I typed out, so they could have a copy of the original. I put all of these in 3" 3 ring binders and gave them each, one as a Christmas gift. I'm not sure how much any of them use these, but they all seemed pleased with the gift. This took several months, but I am glad did it. I think that this type of thing needs to be passed down through the family if possible.