“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” — Harriet van Horne

If you asked my son what his mom does best, you’d probably get an answer that relates to cooking.

When his kindergarten teacher had the kids draw pictures of their moms as part of a Mother’s Day gift, he drew me in the kitchen baking a birthday cake. For about six months, he kept inviting the neighborhood children over to sample my banana bread muffins – even on the days when I hadn’t actually baked any muffins for breakfast! I have a note taped to my refrigerator that says: “Deer Mom. Yor fud is gud.”

If you happened to ask me what I thought I did best, cooking would be pretty far down the list. Growing up, I viewed cooking as something hopelessly old-fashioned and not relevant to the life of the modern working woman. When I moved into my first apartment, I memorized the pizza delivery guy’s phone number. Until we started having trouble coming up with money to pay all our bills, I figured restaurant meals were a well-deserved reward at the end of a long day. Why slave over a hot stove when Visa and MasterCard can come to your rescue?

Now I cook from necessity. Hungry family + tight budget = being forced to become friends with my kitchen.

When I made my son’s birthday cake, it was because I didn’t have the cash for a fancy bakery cake. When I made the muffins, it was because throwing away all the overripe bananas seemed like a ridiculous waste given our rather limited grocery budget. The meal that inspired the note on the refrigerator was actually an invented dish made from leftovers and random cans of stuff from my pantry.

One day, after getting particularly frustrated in the kitchen by a recipe that wouldn’t turn out right and a family that wanted food NOW, I decided to ask my son why he thought his mom was such a good cook. He thought about it for a while, furrowing his forehead as if I had asked him to find the solution to world peace.

“Because you love us,” he finally said as he reached over to give me a kiss on the cheek.

Yup. That works for me.