5.05 /// Parental Guidance...

Ever wonder if today's Gen Z is getting the same hands-on culinary education we did growing up? Reflecting on my childhood, I share cherished memories of learning to cook with my mum, where her practical kitchen philosophy—help out or stay out of the way—instilled in me essential cooking skills and an enduring passion for the kitchen. From the mastery of a simple bechamel sauce to the foundational lessons that shaped my culinary journey, these moments with my mum were more than just about food; they were about life skills passed down through generations.

But cooking wasn't the only invaluable skill I learned from my parents. In this episode, we also explore the broader spectrum of essential life skills my family imparted, such as sewing and financial management. Recounting the frustrations and triumphs of school cooking classes and the pride of making a chicken cobbler at a young age, I highlight the importance of these foundational lessons. Whether it's mending socks or managing money wisely, these skills have enduring significance that we must continue to pass on to the next generation. Join me for a nostalgic journey that underscores the lasting impact of parental wisdom.

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Chapters

• 0:05 Cooking and Learning With Mom
• 11:30 Skills and Lessons From Family

Transcript

Stephen: 0:05

Hello, I remember to unmute the mic, stephen. That's always a good start, welcome to. Infinite Prattle, and today's episode is about cooking with my mum.

Stephen: 0:13

Let's get into that one. Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle, unscripted, unedited prattle on everything hosted by me, steven, listen, like, share, subscribe and enjoy the show ah, welcome back.

Stephen: 0:41

Thank you very much for joining me again. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Ah, welcome back. Thank you very much for joining me again. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. So yeah, today's episode is going to be about cooking and learning to cook and learning to do stuff in general, really, I suppose. So let's see where this one goes.

Stephen: 0:57

On the last episode I was like everywhere, so, which you know, I don't even care. That's how the brain works sometimes. That's how definitely my brain works. So don't be surprised if there's no resolve. You're here, you know what you're getting. If you've never been here before, that's potentially what you might get.

Stephen: 1:14

Anyway, so yeah, so, like, generally, the start of the episode was like talking about cooking, but generally just learning things really from your parents in general. So, yeah, but biggest one in my life was cooking episode was like talking about cooking but generally just learning things really, um, from your parents in general. Um, so, yeah, but biggest one, biggest one in my life was was cooking. I think, um, my mom really really was a great cook and she made things, especially when we were younger, like when she got a full-time job. You know, it was more room-based stuff, but she used to make a lot of stuff herself. So I'm not gonna discredit her, because you know, when you've been at work all day and you're trying to feed three other people as well as yourself, sometimes you have to have a bit of help for some frozen foods. Um, but yeah, she was always like knowledgeable food.

Stephen: 1:55

I think she grew up in a household where her mum passed a lot of knowledge on to her. Um, unfortunately, my mum's mum passed away when my mum was only like 11 years old, so that knowledge was, um, passed on when she was very young and uh, but luckily she had some great aunties and stuff that taught her stuff as well and I think, being irish, I think that was a big thing as well. It was like it's almost like you're in the kitchen and this is what she used to say to me you're in the kitchen, you either get out or you learn something and you do stuff, and I've always kind of like been the kid and that's how I was kind of brought up, as you know, to to be interactive and to be taught stuff and to like to learn and um, so, yeah, she used to uh get me and my brother like helping out in the kitchen. I think I was probably maybe more into it than my brother was.

Stephen: 2:43

Um, I might be wrong, he might disagree, but I always feel like that when I was learning to cook with my mom he wasn't normally there. Maybe I pushed him out of the picture. Oh dear, I never thought about that. Sorry, gav, but yeah, she used to be very much like you're in here, you're getting in the way, don't get in the way. Was very much like you're in here, you're getting in the way, don't get in the way. Help out if you're in here, otherwise get out, kind of thing.

Stephen: 3:10

Very, very chefy. I kind of I can't. I'm like that myself a little bit, but I think I'm more. I think I'm more extreme. I'm very much like if you're in here, do something, but still keep out my way. I'm still grumpy as as uh as as I think. So, yeah, I think, with cooking.

Stephen: 3:31

And again, hockey Match was kind of like the last episode about pocket money and stuff and I don't know shit on the new generation and what are they called Gen Z. I don't know whether they really have been having the skills passed on like I had passed on, and again, I might be completely wrong. I'm coming from a viewpoint of probably like little to no research and just like what I experience and stuff I hear from people and, um, yeah, I think a lot of people like know how to use an oven, a microwave and blah, blah blah and maybe make some basic things. Um, but my mom taught me quite a lot when I was a kid, like stuff, like I've maybe kind of forgotten the stuff you don't do regularly, but stuff like making a bechamel sauce is that how you say it, I don't know?

Stephen: 4:15

like a white sauce, like if you make a white sauce, like that's the basis of loads of dish, like loads of dishes, if you make it, make a good white sauce which is really easy, like it's so easy. It's flour, milk and butter. Basically like a spoonful of butter, a spoonful of flour. You mix it and then you, as when it, when it combines and goes slightly dry, you just slowly add milk and then you get a thick sauce. Then you can either add cheese to it or anything like.

Stephen: 4:45

Um, and it's stuff. It's knowing stuff like that that you know really just helps you in the, in the kitchen, just make things slightly different, more tasty. Um, like knowing how to cook a steak, you know knowing how to cook a chicken breast, like knowing to roast a chicken, and it's not hard. It's just, if you've ever done it before, you're like you're scared of killing yourself and um, I remember when I moved out on my own, I obviously was cooking for myself and yeah I did cook corners and use like jar you know, like pre-mixed uh sauces in jars and stuff.

Stephen: 5:17

But I also made a lot of stuff from scratch myself. Um, because I actually enjoy cooking, to be honest, I I actually really enjoy it and it and it's probably, it's probably on the list. If there was like a top 10 list of careers I would have gone into oh, there's a good, there's a good episode of careers I would have gone into other than the railway and which was kind of like, kind of like the if I'm honest with you the lazy option. For me it was the comfortable option that would be on the list of like something I would have been really interested in doing because I just I think I have a bit of a knack for it. Like, I make people meals and they say they taste nice.

Stephen: 5:52

I'm not a bad baker. So, um, I'm not. I don't think I'm. You know, great Britain, great British, bake Off like level. But you know I can, I can, I can make a really mean sponge. Um, I've always been like. My mom used to teach us how to make little fairy cakes and stuff from a young age, how to make her own um, like icing and what's it called buttercream and all that sort of stuff and it all that stuff's really simple. It looks when you go and buy a cake in the shop and you go, oh my god, this is amazing. Oh, I could never do that myself. You, you could. It's not that hard, it's mixing some ingredients. The worst bit is cooking it, like cooking it at the right level. And then, when it's done and even then it's not that bad, jesus Christ, my seat bloody banged. Then what happened then? Oh dear, even my, even my chair doesn't like how much weight I've put on diet soon.

Stephen: 6:42

Honestly, I need to diet, stop eating shite that's a that's a different subject altogether.

Stephen: 6:49

Um, yeah, so I, I I was taught when I was a kid all that sort of stuff like my mom used to get me in the kitchen and she used to make being again being Irish, she makes a lot of food from scratch, like soups and stews, and she'd make. She'd make like Italian dishes, so she'd make like lasagna and bolognese and she'd make chili, chili con carne from from scratch as well and she'd get. She'd get me helping, like she'd get me chopping things and she would trust me and I think that's a good, a good thing to do and there's something from that. That chores episode from last week I didn't really touch on I think that was like you know this, all this stuff like bonds you with people, but it also gains trust, and giving someone a job to do, trust them to do it, is really big and passing them skills on and passing a skill of cooking on is massive.

Stephen: 7:39

When I moved out on my own, I wasn't bothered about cooking and it saves you money. Like, let's face it, if you buy pre-mixed stuff or pre-assembled stuff, one, you're only getting that flavour, because it's very difficult to get away from the flavour that that company wants you to have in that jarred like sauce. But if you buy the fresh ingredients to make the sauce, yes, it may cost you a little bit more money, but generally the yield out of it is more. So I would like go and buy like tin tomatoes, like tin chopped tomatoes, you know, tomato puree, all the fresh vegetables and stock and all that sort of stuff. Or make my own stock, uh, from any cut chickens I'd had and stuff like that, and then I would make sauces from scratch and you'd be surprised actually, how much you get from like doing it from scratch. So instead of being like a jars worth to make like maybe four meals, I'd normally get like enough for six to eight meals. So I'd paid a little bit more money but I could get loads more out of it and that saves you so much money.

Stephen: 8:41

Doing shift work as well, I used to bag it all up and put in the freezer and I used to like batch cook like crazy, and that's the skill that my mom gave me and I'm super grateful for that. My dad isn't bad in the kitchen for certain things and when, when him and my mom got divorced, he had had kind of, I think, quickly learned some recipes and learned how to cook, because I think my mum pretty much did all the cooking. But my dad makes a mean cheese on toast, man mean cheese on toast, and I don't know what he does to it. It just tastes the best.

Stephen: 9:12

Maybe it's just because my dad's made it, I don't know, but yeah yeah, my mum makes like such a great Sundayay dinner and it's just because my mum's made it and I think it's just that taste from childhood. Um, and I make a great sunday dinner and I love my own and all of sarah's as well, like my wife she she makes a great sunday dinner. I love hers, but sorry about tasting my mum's. I'm just going like it's like nostalgia of how she makes her gravy and how she cooks the vegetables and how she cooks the chicken and and um, but that's the great thing about cooking, isn't it? It's the great thing about, like, learning a skill and honing it and making it your own, making that stamp on that kind of skill and the output for it is your own then, isn't it? And uh, but yeah, like I used to, I was very disappointed when I actually went to school and we started doing home economics and we did cooking in school.

Stephen: 10:02

I was super gutted because I was thinking, oh yeah, I'm going to learn loads of stuff. My mum's taught me loads of stuff. I'm going to excel in this area and I'm actually going to learn some new stuff. Because it's cooking and I like curries and the teacher was like right, and I think one of the very first things we were going to do was cooking a curry. And the teacher was like we're going to cook a curry from scratch and I was like, oh my god, that's amazing, learning all the spices and mixing them all, and and I was thinking, oh my god, are we gonna get to choose what curry we make? And all this, and she basically just came back and was like uh, so what I need you to do, people, is, uh, bring like a selection of these, these vegetables in. So, like an onion, uh. So everyone had to bring an onion in. And then it was like choose from. You could use two or three from this select, this other selection to bring in. I was like, oh, great, and she went you need two chicken breasts. I was like, great, and then a jar of sauce. Like no word of lie, she wanted us just go to the supermarket and buy a jar of a sauce of our choosing.

Stephen: 10:59

I literally innocently put my hand up and I was like are we not going to learn how to make the sauce? And she was like no, we don't need to know that. And I was like but you're a school and you went to educate. I was like, because I was a bit of an arse. I was like I don't understand, like why that is. Surely you teach us to cook. We've got a couple of vegetables and cook all them and cook the chicken and boil the rice. Surely you're teaching us to cook? We've got to cook all the vegetables and cook all them and cook the chicken and boil the rice, but you're just going to get us to throw a sauce on it all. I'd like to know how to make the sauce. That's the most important bit.

Stephen: 11:30

And for me, cooking a chicken, cooking the chicken and cutting the vegetables and cooking them I knew how to do that, like my mum had taught me that. And I was really fucked off, to be honest with you, because I was thinking buying a sauce Are you kidding me? And she actually spoke to me in a lesson and said listen, I completely agree with you, to be honest. And I was like really, she was like, yeah, she went. The sauce is the fundamental part of the curry. The vegetables just cook in it it, so you can just literally throw them in the chickens. And she went.

Stephen: 12:02

But the syllabus says we the biggest part is knowing how to cook rice I think it was and knowing how to cook the chicken so you didn't kill yourself, so you didn't get salmonella. And I was like I can understand that. I said but cooking chicken's easy. And she was like well, you'll have no problem with this part of the course. And really, and I was just like, well, no, because it's stupid, and I couldn't believe it, that like they just wanted to learn how to cook chicken. But it was an opportunity. I felt that they could have taught us a complete meal and we did it again with something else. I remember what it was now was it like shepherd's pie or so.

Stephen: 12:36

I can't remember what it was, but it was literally like you could bring.

Stephen: 12:38

Like if it was like shepherd's pie, for example, you could can't even remember what it was, but it was literally like you could bring. Like if it was like shepherd's pie, for example, you could bring pre-made mashed potato in like you know, just bought mashed potato or something like that. It was like really silly and that's everything we made in home. Economics from that point on was like we never had to make much from scratch. It was always like with the curry learning how to cook the chicken. There was always like the with the curry learn how to cook the chicken. There was always like the syllabus of the school and the government wanted us to know rightly so, I suppose a certain element of it like make sure the meat's cooked and make sure they know how to do this, and then everything else was secondary and not important. So obviously the cheats came in, like you could buy chopped things, you could buy pre you know soups in a can and stuff like that. It was like like we made yeah, I think that was one of the things we made bread, but you didn't have to make the soup, um, and I enjoyed making the bread because it's something I'd never really done with my mom, uh, so it was actually really interesting to me, uh, needing the bread and knowing the process. So I love making bread and I don't do it often enough and I've said this before I need to make more bread. I need to take, take time out of my week and make like a small loaf every week and that can be the bread that we use. It's nothing like fresh bread.

Stephen: 13:48

There's like other skills my mum taught me, as well as like the cooking side of it, you know. Oh, I'll just remember this before I move on. She actually let me make tea for everyone one night and I made it from scratch. She literally gave me the kitchen and I wanted to make other. I actually got all these recipe books like really old-fashioned ones, like from the 70s and even earlier than that I think that people would give her, and there was one in there and I said I really want to make a chicken cobbler. So I made everything for her. I made like I cooked the chicken.

Stephen: 14:31

I think that's where my kitchen stuff started, really. And, yeah, I made a chicken cobbler and made the crumble for the top with a rubbing technique to crumble it all and a savoury crumble, and cooked it. It and you know what? I think even my brother was impressed, but he didn't. He didn't want to give me too much credit because I think maybe he was a bit jealous of my cooking skills, um, but yeah, and I really enjoyed it, and I was, I was under pressure because I didn't want to. I've always had this thing about getting everything right, being perfect for everything and, and, um, you know, trying to be the absolute perfectionist. And I think even my mom was impressed as well, actually, that it came out as well, as she basically said like I don't, I couldn't have done that better, that's. And I think she even said it was nicer, because it's nicer than what I could have made, or something she might just be nice.

Stephen: 15:18

But uh, and I was like like 12 or so when I did that, like 11 maybe, um, and then a few years later we came to the chicken curry scenario and I was like, seriously, um, but she also taught me, like you know how to sew, how to use the sewing machine? Um, you know how to mend socks and that's something no one ever does anymore. Um, because that's stuff that she was taught and in fact, I think my dad taught me how to mend socks. Actually it was kind of thing he used to. He was taught and in fact, I think my dad taught me how to mend socks. Actually it was kind of the thing that he used to. He was taught when he joined the army.

Stephen: 15:48

And there's all these little things that you know, you get taught from your parents and I'm gonna teach my kid like, if we ever fucking have one there's another story there. I need to do an update on that. I think that you know all these things are super important. I think that you know all these things are super important. I think that you know you know how to manage your money. She was.

Stephen: 16:10

She was always very good at the money in the household my mum and she was the one that was kind of in charge of it and she kind of told me how to sensibly manage stuff and maybe not be frivolous. I ignored her obviously when I was young young, but she's always been very clever with money and she's always been very good at looking after herself and she just give us all these skills. And my dad gave me loads of skills as well in different things, like you know, like little little diy things and probably probably dad just kind of like more, more life getting out there and doing stuff in life, whereas my mom was like very much home stuff and home making stuff, um, obviously, as well as life advice every so often. But I think I listened to my dad more because obviously my dad was like my dad and ex-military and he'd been and seen it and he shot shot a gun and jumped out of airplanes and he was.

Stephen: 16:58

He was a paratrooper. That's the whole jumping out of airplanes thing and um, but yeah, I, I feel like it's carried through into my life. It's carried through into to where I am now and the chores I did as well. You know all the things that they got me to do to. To reinforce that, like it's carried through into my adult life and I don't like to stand around and watch someone do something. I will offer help, I will muck in with, you know, a menial task. I'm not above anything. I don't think like if I'm like if the cleaner at work is doing something, I'll offer to help. You know, I'm not. I'm not like I would scrub a toilet. You know, even now, like I'm a manager in the job I do, I'm in management level, but I would clean a toilet. It doesn't bother me.

Stephen: 17:47

I'm not above things, and I've been taught to be proactive in that sense. Um, the one thing I do hate is the gardening. I do hate gardening and I I don't know if that's because, like, that was the thing I didn't particularly like when I lived at home, because our garden was so bloody huge and, uh, quitting the grass used to take so bloody long and weeding the garden used to take so bloody long and, uh, all I want to do is sit and enjoy it.

Stephen: 18:07

Um, and our garden here isn't isn't as big by a long, long way, but it just gets out of hand from me. Like I kind of realized now how much work my dad put into it and why he needed my help a little bit. Um, because, like I can't manage the garden, and my aunt, sarah's actually sarah's uncle, actually came today and actually cut everything for us and actually trimmed everything down with my strimmer and everything. So, thank you, andy, it was saving me. I felt terrible, though I do feel terrible. It's my job to do, but he really enjoys it.

Stephen: 18:37

So it's like charity.

Stephen: 18:42

Yeah, but there's them, skills alone. But that taught me how to use a drill alone taught, taught me how to use like a drill, taught me how to use a strimmer, taught me how to use a petrol lomo, taught me how to maintain a pond, and all these things sound stupid, but there's, there's. There's things in that that when, when you grow up, they're applicable to other things, you can apply them to other areas of your life, and I think that's why it's so important. And I might be shitting on the new generation, but I feel like my generation, the Gen X kind of millennial kind of crossover that I am. So I think we need our own name because we're not Gen X. I don't like being called excuse me a millennial. We're a crossover.

Stephen: 19:26

Anyone in the late, late 30s to early 40s is a unique species, and I'm going to do a podcast about that because I think that needs to be discussed, and that's where I'm going to end it today. So, thank you very much. Let me know if, like, if, there's any skills that were passed on to you that you that you find useful. You're not just cooking. Cooking is kind of a very generalized one. Is there anything that, like your parents, passed on that has become a career for you, or started a career, or? Um, is there anything that you use day to day, that you probably never do, unless you were shown as a as a kid? Um, because I must admit I've not sewed anything in a long time, but I do own a sewing machine. There's probably not many men that used to live alone that owned a sewing machine. People used to find that very funny that I hemmed my own curtains. Anyway, if you've got the skill, I suppose you have to do it don't you so yeah, so yeah let me know your thoughts.

Stephen: 20:20

In the description there's all the links for everything and you can actually text me directly to tell me your thoughts. So just you can press that link. Not sure how it charges you people who've got free text. I think it just works on free text, but there may be a charge, so disclaimer there. But yeah, just send me a text and let me know your thoughts. And yeah, thank you very much for listening and I'll speak to you all soon you've been listening to Infinite Dreadhull.

Stephen: 20:48

Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, go back and listen to some others and please continue to listen. Your support is much appreciated. Please like, share, comment and subscribe and I'll speak to you all again soon. Take care.