Cooking With Becca

My daughter Becca is 22 years old. I am a real foodie and love to cook, bake, can, shop for food, and eat things I have never had before. For years I have been offering to teach her how to cook. Just a couple of days ago Becca was watching an episode of World's Worst Cooks on the Food Network. One of the contestants said that the reason she was competing was that her grandmother had wanted to teach her how to cook and she was never interested. Now that her grandmother is gone, she wants to try to learn to cook so she can reclaim that part of her heritage. And it must have touched Becca. She asked me to teach her how to cook. Yesterday was our first lesson and as in any good Italian kitchen lesson one was pasta and marinara. I was so excited to do this with Becca. I showed her some basic techniques but she did most of the work. And she was really into it too, not just going through the motions to satisfy me. Becca made the fresh pasta and marinara, though I think that there wasn't enough garlic or onions (as if there would ever be enough garlic or onions for me). When she was done it was a beautiful thing to see the meal my daughter had created. I so much wanted to share that particular meal with Alice and Becca. It would have been the most special meal of my life. I had to settle for letting them enjoy the meal and tell me how good it was. Rebecca wants our next lesson to be cooking shrimp, probably a shrimp fettucine. Becca really doesn't like garlic (how Italian can she be if she doesn't like garlic?) so scampi is out. And for Easter I plan on teaching her my grandmother's recipe for a traditional Easter bread called cresca. It is full of meats and cheeses and, when I could eat, was probably my most favorite food in the world. I will just have to resign myself to the role of passionately interested spectator. Thank you Becca. Asking me to teach you to cook is one of the best gifts you could have given me.