by Malia Kirby

I certainly did not grow up eating what most in the natural health community would consider a healthy diet. Meat and potatoes were standard fare, vegetables were usually coated in some sort of cheese sauce, and any grains eaten usually came from sugar-laden breakfast cereals. Mom always had cookies, cupcakes, or some sort of baked dessert item in the house, although to her credit, she did make them all from scratch. She's actually fairly well known for her cinnamon rolls in the small rural town she and my father reside in, making our holiday visits interesting when we go out there to visit. Without fail, one of her customers will show up at their home for something she's made, notice I'm visiting for the holidays, and asks me the inevitable question:

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"Are you as good of a cook as your mother?"

Yes and no. It's an uncomfortable question, to say the least. My style of cooking is considerably different from my mother's and I'll substitute ingredients here and there to suit my tastes. I also refuse to use trans-fats, corn syrup, and anything drowning in nitrates, and I prefer to use local, organic, free-range, grass-fed, and any other moniker that Whole Foods likes to slap on their products, where my mom...not so much. Asking me this question also assumes the mentality of mothers teaching their daughters to cook and most people don't realize that my mother is definitely not the Donna Reed type. She typically works 70-80 hours per week running her own salon, which didn't leave much time to teach me cooking skills. Of course, I must also admit that I was not interested in learning to cook during my youth. I considered myself a modern feminist and by gods, I wasn't having any of it. I would go out to eat, thank you very much, and if a roommate or significant other would cook for me, then that would be an added bonus. Regardless, these answers typically aren't what your average conservative, Midwestern WASP wants to hear, so I've learned with time to smile, shrug, and let them come to their own conclusions.

It wasn't until I moved out of the sorority house (no, I'm not going to tell you which one and yes, I now thoroughly enjoy the irony of a self-proclaimed feminist joining a sorority) and into my first post-college laboratory position that I understood the need for kitchen skills. After about a month of working the graveyard shift, the prospects of eating yet another pizza began to make me question the sanity of being a stubborn mule on picking up some cooking techniques and I caved. I didn't want to be the little woman at home cooking the meals, but I just couldn't take any more fast food. For that matter, my butt couldn't either. If you are what you eat, I needed to stop being a tub of margarine. It was time to man up and get over it.

I started picking up cookbooks and trying out recipes. Some of them weren't bad. Some were disasters I'm sure I should have reported to the state as a biohazard spill. The important thing, though, was that I was learning from my mistakes. I began to understand why, when making a roux, one cooks the flour before whisking in the cooking liquid. I saw the importance of slicing a tough cut of meat against the grain to make it edible. And before I knew it, I was cooking French bistro fare for my family...and I enjoyed making it as much as I enjoyed eating it. More than that, I knew that our feminist stereotypes were complete BS. Or, as Collette stated to Linguini in Pixar's Ratatouille, "You think cooking is a cute job, eh? Like Mommy in the kitchen? Well, Mommy never had to face the dinner rush while the orders come flooding in, and every dish is different and none are simple, and all different cooking time, but must arrive at the customer's table at exactly the same time, hot and perfect! Every second counts and you CANNOT be MOMMY!" Food can be artistic, wildly satisfying, and more punk than punk. Even more than that, food can be an adventure. Just ask Tony Bourdain.

All adventures aside, food is our most important medicine, bar none. While you may forget to take an herbal prescription, you most definitely won't forget to eat for long, not if you want to survive, anyway. And I've noticed just how many problems we see in Chinese medicine that could have been changed or even avoided by eating a different diet. My own rampaging blood vacuity may have never been an issue had I not been a stubborn German kid who decided in early childhood that she hated the taste of meat and was only going to eat a vegetarian diet, thank you very much. Strangely enough (or not, depending on your viewpoint), once I moved to altitude and couldn't get away with continuing my eating habits that meat suddenly became one of the tastiest foods on the planet. You know the stereotype of pregnant women with pickles and ice cream? Yeah, that's me with meat, minus the pregnancy. I could take Si Wu Tang until my skin became the color of rhemannia, but nothing puts a dent in my vacuity like a good steak...except perhaps for the gigantic bowls of pho served down in Little Saigon for less than $5.

If we are what we eat, today I'd like to think I'm pretty badass, although I'll concede that perception is definitely in the eye of the beholder...or in this case, on the tongues of the tasters. No, none of the recipes are presented at Cook's Corner as "health food" and will not pass a food Nazi examination. I'm ok with that, because in reality there is no perfect food. There is only what is applicable for the right person at the right time. The recipes can all be used medicinally, if each practitioner reading this so desires, although I will warn you that the staff at Blue Poppy will not be advising anyone how to do so. The main purpose in Cook's Corner is enjoyment and entertainment, just as food should be for us all. Who cares if your food is medicinal if you don't enjoy eating it also? With that, I leave you with the words of the fabulous Julia Child, who savored her food as much as she savored life itself to the ripe old age of 91...

Bon Appetit!