Alright, let's get serious for a hot minute y'all...

Now, I could start this by saying, "What does cooking mean to me," but other than being cliché, it just doesn't work that way for me. A lot of people that have passed and a lot still around me have taught me everything about cooking. Most of the times I saw my grandmother, she was in the kitchen. All my five aunts love to cook, which I'm sure they got from my grandmother. My mom liked to cook and even after a long day of work, she'd come home and make sure I was fed.

Cooking was and still is essential in my family. Even though my grandmother is gone, we still make her famous pimento cheese spread. It's divine, like seriously if you put this stuff over nachos the nachos would want to eat themselves. Sounds weird but if you had it, you'd understand. Now, I would give you all the recipe but if I did I would be shunned by my family. It's a secret. And now that I just described it like the best thing ever, I feel terrible that I can't give you the recipe. Another dish I will always remember is mom's tuna noodle casserole. I still make it to this day and it's super cost effective too. It's about $10-15 for all the ingredients and will last all week. Whenever I make this casserole I just feel at home, no matter where I am. At school, an aunt's house or when I get a place of my own. I don't have to measure a thing either, it's just easy and works every time. It's a dish that you can count on. Every time I pull the casserole out of the oven, I always like to think she is going to walk through the door. It's not necessarily a sad feeling, it's actually comforting.

Now, let's go back to the good 'ol days...

I was quite small when I found my passion for cooking. I was about nine and I would watch my grandmother make the easter bunny cake. She was a smart woman; made cake from scratch, always balanced her checkbook at the end of the month, made sure she taught her kids to cook and always gave out the christmas crackers (you know the ones where you'd get those little paper crowns?). Well, she'd make this three-dimensional bunny cake. She would fill four round cake pans with her yellow cake mixture, from scratch. She would bake them, put them on a cooling rack and then cut two of the rounds in half and the other ones, cut each side only a quarter way in. She would assemble this pretty humble looking cake in the beginning, but then it turned into something grand. She would have put the Cool Whip in between the layers when assembling them. Then once all assembled, she'd put another full tub of Cool Whip on the outside and just coat the entirety of it with coconut. She'd also dye coconut green and put it on the bottom of the surrounding cake plate as the "meadow." Also, some bunny cakes use paper ears but my grandma wasn't fooling around, those ears would be cake too. It's just not the same without it.

Although this picture isn't of her cake, it's pretty much the exact cake she'd make. I'll have to ask my family if they have an old photos of past easters.

It's pretty darn cute isn't it...I mean, that was my memory of easter. Well, that an never finding the glass egg with $20 in it and crying. Every time. Never found it once. It was always my cousin Spencer or Hannah who found it. But man, once that bunny cake came out my grandma would give me extra because she felt bad.

Those easters I think, where when somehow maybe subliminally it was instilled that people could feel happy from eating something you make.

After learning that, I really wanted to become a chef. I would watch food network all the time, cook anything my mom felt I was capable of cooking and I even wanted a white chef's coat. I never got that coat but I always got aprons, which I never used. Sorry to those family members reading this who got me aprons. I would watch the Food Network all day, every day. Well, what it seemed like to me. My favorite shows were Iron Chef (not the Americanized bullcrap on now, the OG Iron Chef), Paula Deen (her slurs aren't excused by any means but damn could she cook) also another favorite of mine was Good Eats where Alton Brown would scientifically tear apart a recipe and tell you exactly what was going on with what ingredients on a molecular level. I absolutely adored that show, still watch re-runs of it.

Ask any of my family members that they can tell you if I've been in a room by what channel was on the TV. If it was Food Network, I was only there mere seconds ago in my natural habitat.

About age 12 - 15 I still loved cooking but stopped thinking about it as a profession. I still kind of want to be a chef so if the Cloud Atlas theory is real, I want to be reborn as Gordon Ramsay because I think that would be fun as hell.

"You hear that god, please reincarnate me as Gordon Ramsay, I want to be a chef but also be able to yell curse words on network telly."

After all my dreaming, watching and practicing to be a chef, I never did it. I can't really tell you why. I think I just realized film was my true passion, although when I make a really nice meal and share it with people, it still gives me the same joy as knowing my name will be in the credits of a film that people all over will see. I think I'm just hooked on that feeling you get when you know someone's life may have been made just a bit better for those two hours and forgot all the sh*t they had going on. That's why I'm still in film. But you can do the same thing in cooking with a more direct impact, yes but it just doesn't get me fired up like filmmaking does.

Now, after all this talk about what I remember with food and cooking, I still have lovely experiences to this day with family and cooking. I continue to help my aunts cook and prepare things for holidays because I enjoy it. I will continue to cook and will always miss that time in my life when I wanted to be a chef. But, I think all is for the better.

Tuna Noodle Casserole:

1 package egg noodles

Mixture:

2 cans tuna of your choice (Genova brand if you're feeling fancy haha but seriously it's about $4 a can)

1 small bag of small sweet peas

One 2 cup package of cheddar cheese (half in the mixture and half to put on top of the casserole)

1 family sized can of cream of mushroom soup

Cook the egg noodles all the way. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a big bowl, mix the tuna, peas, 1 cup of the cheddar and whole family sized can of cream of mushroom soup (it will help the casserole retain a better texture and not dry out). Once the noodles are cooked and drained, add them back to the pot they were boiled in and pour about half of the filling/mixture in and make sure it's incorporated and then add the remaining half. Mix well, line a 12" x 9" pan with foil and spray with cooking spray. Transfer the mixture into the greased pan and top with the remaining cup of cheddar. Put into the preheated oven and bake for 30-35 minutes. Sometimes the outer bit will be hot but the inner part won't so just pop it in the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

Then take it out and enjoy! :D