My mom can't cook (it just wasn't born in her - and her mom was a fussy perfectionist who never allowed her in the kitchen) but my dad is a splendid cook (only boy and youngest in a big family of girls - he can also sew on buttons, darn socks, and dynamite a bridge < g > - didn't learn that last one at home but in the Corps of Engineers). And he taught me . . . I need a cookbook, but nobody at our house ever goes hungry and our guests do seem to like the food. My husband is a chemist and says he cooks all day at work, doesn't need to when he gets home, but he's a good egg and I never wash a dish!
My girl goes off to college in two weeks, I'm sending her with a microwave cookbook (hot plates not allowed in the dorms) and a breaking heart . . . < sniff >
. . . but this means I'll have time to teach my son to cook! We'll start with grilling over charcoal, all men love that!
My mother also would not allow me in the kitchen. My dad taught me a little, then I learned the rest when I got married. The biggest problem people have with my husband's cooking ("what's a recipe?") is he will make something incredibly delicious, but never be able to duplicate it again, because he just throws things together.
Well, when I was stationed at Twenty-nine Palms, I learned to cook on an iron (turned upside down in a shoe box).