The Only Recipe I Will Ever Need to Know For The Rest of My Life

I’m sure that we can all remember the first few foods that we were able to make without the aid of others.  I’m talking about the ones that require a tad more effort than simply pealing a banana or punching a fork through cellophane.  By the age of nine I knew how to make three things: stovetop popcorn… eggs…and oatmeal cookies.   It is these first few foods that we take a tremendous amount of pride in knowing how to make before we are even tall enough to open cupboards.  Picture me planting my palms on the surface of our dated blue kitchen counter tops, elbows high, knees spring-loaded then bouncing up
(spider monkey style) in order to reach things like leavening agents and the little brown vanilla bottle.  I had no clue how to make anything other than eggs, popcorn, and oatmeal cookies, nor did I have the desire to.  So ”Cooking with Molly’s” imaginary audience tuned in and saw episode after episode of how to make, “Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.” Which, by the way, are the cookie’s official name according to the underside of the plastic-rimmed Quaker Oat lid. 

Looking back, I suppose that a person could live exclusively off of these three foods.  I mean, technically… they would survive.  Sure they may develop scurvy (a Vitamin C deficiency) and be prone to a multitude of other health complications, but at least their energy requirement would be met.  Let’s just assume that the cookie’s flour was heavily enriched and that the eggs were laid by chickens whose diet consisted of linoleic and alpha-linolenic laden grain.  Who am I kidding?  Popcorn, eggs, and oatmeal cookies does not a diet make.  So it’s a good thing that I learned how to make more.

And yet…when one Googles, “the only recipe I will ever need to know for the rest of my life” something like these pop up.  Sounds good to me!  So let’s pretend…ok?…because Google said and we wish that it were so.

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