Young Ravens Literary Review: A Biannual Online Literary Journal
  Young Ravens Literary Review
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  • Interviews
    • Issue 1 Interviews >
      • Interview with artist Ira Joel Haber
      • Interview with writer S. L. Woodford
      • Interview with poet Dayna Patterson
    • Issue 2 Interviews >
      • Interview with poet Laura Lovic-Lindsay
      • Interview with photographer Michelle Hrvat
      • Interview with author Thalia Spinrad
      • Interview with artist Bobbie Berendson W.
    • Issue 3 Interviews >
      • Interview with author Terri Glass
      • Interview with poet Michael Keshigian
      • Interview with artist Zephren Turner
    • Issue 4 Interviews >
      • Interview with Poet Anne Whitehouse
      • Interview with Artist W. Jack Savage
      • Interview with Author Krisanne Knudsen
    • Issue 5 Interviews >
      • Interview with Poet Seth Jani
      • Interview with Artist Fabrice Poussin
      • Interview with Writer Judith Kelly Quaempts
    • Issue 6 Interviews >
      • Interview with Artist Christine Stoddard
      • Interview with Poet Ricky Ray
      • Interview with Poet Christina Lovin
    • Issue 7 Interviews >
      • Interview with Artist Max Talley
      • Interview with Poet Ali Hintz
      • Interview with Author Lauren Morrow
    • Issue 8 Interviews >
      • Interview with Artist Jesse White
      • Interview with Poet Jeff Burt
      • Interview with Author Daanish Jamal
    • Issue 9 Interviews >
      • Interview with Poet Antoni Ooto
      • Interview with Artist Juan Páez
      • Interview with Writer Meg Freer
    • Issue 10 Interviews >
      • Interview with Shannon Elizabeth Gardner
      • Interview with Karen Neuberg
      • Interview with Vikram Masson
    • Issue 11 Interviews >
      • Interview with Tay Greenleaf
      • Interview with Larry D. Thacker
      • Interview with Jennifer Battisti
    • Issue 12 Interviews >
      • Interview with Shankar Ramakrishnan
      • Interview with Bella Koschalk
      • Interview with Christina Hoag
    • Issue 13 Interviews >
      • Interview with Lauren Walke
      • Interview with Michael Brockley
      • Interview with Donna Pucciani
    • Issue 14 Interviews >
      • Interview with Jemma Leigh Roe
      • Interview wtih Michael T. Young
      • Interview with Judith Ford
    • Issue 15 Interviews >
      • Interview with Richard Levine
      • Interview with Laura Erekson
      • Interview with Leslie Dianne
    • Issue 16 Interviews >
      • Interview with Richard Hanus
      • Interview with Damon Hubbs
      • Interview with Wendy K. Mages
    • Issue 17 Interviews >
      • Interview with Matina Vossou
      • Interview wtih Sigrun Susan Lane
      • Interview with Ariel Mitchell Williams
  • Issues
    • Issue 1 >
      • Introduction Issue 1
      • Cover Art "Girl with Bouquet"
      • Hearing
      • Tiger Nebula & Barnacles
      • 3 Poems by Dayna Patterson
      • A Fruitful Tale
      • 3 Photographs of Spain
      • Sea Ice & Touch the Sun
      • Toad Hunting
      • Touch of Rainbow
      • Moon over Venice & Fontana di Trevi
      • Longboat Key Beach
      • Seashells & Colored Grove
      • Driving Home from the Bar with Frankie, Winter
      • You are the Vision
      • The Embroidery (Vyshyvanka)
      • Safe, Sound
    • Issue 2 >
      • Cover art by Tommy Ottley
      • YR2 Introduction
      • YR2 Bobbie Berendson W.
      • YR2 Laura Madeline Wiseman
      • YR2 Robert A. Kaufman
      • YR2 Laura Lovic-Lindsay
      • YR2 Rebecca Page
      • YR2 Lanette Cadle
      • YR2 Michelle Hrvat
      • YR2 Heather Monson
      • YR2 Maria S. Picone
      • YR2 Mary Bast
      • YR2 Bridget Gage-Dixon
      • YR2 Liz & Elisa Pulido
      • YR2 Katherine Simmons
      • YR2 Thalia Spinrad
      • YR2 Wilda Morris
      • YR2 Ruth Foley
      • YR2 Brent Danley Jones
      • YR2 Sarah Sadie
    • Issue 3 >
      • Cover Art by Zephren Turner
      • YR3 Introduction
      • YR3 Michael Keshigian
      • YR3 Natalie Luehr
      • YR3 Fern G. Z. Carr
      • YR3 Elizabeth Perdomo
      • YR3 Anandi Wilkinson
      • YR3 Terri Glass
      • YR3 Brendan Walsh
      • YR3 Heidi Morrell
      • YR3 Marianne Szlyk
      • YR3 Rachel Bownik
      • YR3 Dennis Trujillo
      • YR3 Dani Dymond
      • YR3 Sylvia Ashby
      • YR3 W. Jack Savage
      • YR3 Krisanne Hastings Knudsen
      • YR3 Dayna Patterson
      • YR3 Mary Buchinger
      • YR3 Linda M. Crate
      • YR3 Nels Hanson
      • YR3 Stephen L. Peck
      • YR3 Debbie Barr
      • YR3 Joanne Esser
      • YR3 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR3 Emily Strauss
    • Issue 4 >
      • Cover art by Kurt Knudsen
      • Introduction: the heart of cyclicity
      • YR4 Page Turner
      • YR4 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR4 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR4 Bridget Gage-DIxon
      • YR4 Lisa Cook
      • YR4 Mary Stike
      • YR4 W. Jack Savage
      • YR4 Michael Pendragon
      • YR4 J. Ellington
      • YR4 Mantz Yorke
      • YR4 John Grey
      • YR4 Carl Boon
      • YR4 Lynn Otto
      • YR4 Ayendy Bonifacio
      • YR4 Yuan Changming
      • YR4 Paul Stansbury
      • YR4 Ingrid Bruck
      • YR4 Helen Patrice
      • YR4 Laura Sobbott Ross
      • YR4 Krisanne Hastings Knudsen
      • YR4 Emily Bilman
      • YR4 Kaye Linden
      • YR4 Edilson A. Ferreira
      • YR4 Jessica Lindsley
      • YR4 Michael Keshigian
    • Issue 5 >
      • YR5 Introduction
      • YR5 Kirchheimer & Piudik
      • YR5 Robert Ford
      • YR5 Mark A. Fisher
      • YR5 Eli T. Mond
      • YR5 Dani Dymond
      • YR5 Seth Jani
      • YR5 Tonya Hamill (Poetry)
      • YR5 Kersten Christianson
      • YR5 Ed Higgins
      • YR5 Thomas Piekarski
      • YR5 Don Thompson
      • YR5 Marc Carver
      • YR5 Carol Smallwood
      • YR5 Mackenzie Dwyer
      • YR5 Michael Keshigian
      • YR5 Banwynn (Suta) Oakshadow
      • YR5 Terri Simon
      • YR5 Richard Fein
      • YR5 Andrew Hubbard
      • YR5 Matthew Burns
      • YR5 Allison Gish
      • YR5 Judith Kelly Quaempts
      • YR5 Anthony Rubino
      • YR5 Tonya Hamill (Art)
      • YR5 Jennie Harward
      • YR5 Chad M. Horn
      • YR5 Shandi Kano
      • YR5 Fabrice Poussin
      • YR5 Alec Solomita
      • YR5 Review
    • Issue 6 >
      • YR6 Introduction
      • YR6 Christine Stoddard
      • YR6 Ahrend Torrey
      • YR6 Jenn Powers
      • YR6 Felicia Mitchell
      • YR6 Brandon Marlon
      • YR6 Natalie Luehr
      • YR6 Sarah Rehfeldt
      • YR6 Terri Glass
      • YR6 Christina Lovin
      • YR6 Kelly DuMar
      • YR6 Joan White
      • YR6 Peggy Turnbull
      • YR6 Nate Maxson
      • YR6 Vivian Wagner
      • YR6 Tushar Jain
      • YR6 Gordon Kippola
      • YR6 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR6 Ashley Park Owens - Art
      • YR6 Marianne Peel
      • YR6 Lindsey S. Frantz
      • YR6 Mark Bonica
      • YR6 Ed Krizek
      • YR6 Ricky Ray
      • YR6 Edilson Ferreira
      • YR6 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR6 Cat Dixon
      • YR6 Barbara Brooks
      • YR6 William Doreski
      • YR6 John Grey
      • YR6 Michael Keshigian
      • YR6 Maureen Solomon
      • YR6 Kersten Christianson
      • YR6 Jennifer Liston
      • YR6 Shawna Sommerstad
      • YR6 Ashley Parker Owens - Poetry
      • YR6 Claire Blotter
      • YR6 Zev Torres
    • Issue 7 >
      • Introduction Issue 7
      • YR7 Max Talley
      • YR7 Thomas O'Connell
      • YR7 Fabrice Poussin
      • YR7 Archita Mittra
      • YR7 Ali Hintz
      • YR7 Lucía Damacela
      • YR7 Steven Sher
      • YR7 Cynthia Blank
      • YR7 Kathryn Knight Sonntag
      • YR7 Holly Day
      • YR7 Judy Shepps Battle
      • YR7 Allegra Forman
      • YR7 Kristen Wood
      • YR7 Sarah Rehfeldt
      • YR7 Don Thompson
      • YR7 Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz
      • YR7 Dan Brook
      • YR7 Michael Maul
      • YR7 Dennis Trujillo
      • YR7 Lauren Morrow
      • YR7 Daginne Aignend
      • YR7 Ann Christine Tabaka
      • YR7 Judith Kelly Quaempts
      • YR7 Michael Keshigian
      • YR7 Karen Poppy
      • YR7 Matthew Barron
      • YR7 Krikor Der Hohannesian
      • YR7 Linda M. Crate
      • YR7 Natalie Schriefer
      • YR7 Bob Carlton
      • YR7 Roger Sippl
      • YR7 Jake Sheff
      • YR7 Dan Brook - NF
      • YR7 Jim Zola
      • YR7 Kelsey May
      • YR7 Mark A. Fisher
      • YR7 Meg Freer
      • YR7 Chris Connolly
      • YR7 DJ Hill
      • YR7 Mantz Yorke
      • YR7 Mark J. Mitchell
    • Issue 8 >
      • Issue 8 Introduction
      • YR8 Jesse White
      • YR8 Barbara A. Meier
      • YR8 Meg Freer
      • YR8 Andrea Wolper
      • YR8 Emily Warzeniak - Art
      • YR8 Emily Warzeniak - Poetry
      • YR8 Parul Gupta
      • YR8 Robert Beveridge
      • YR8 Chris Stolle
      • YR8 Maria Pascualy
      • YR8 Daanish Jamal
      • YR8 Roberta Senechal de la Roche
      • YR8 Wendy Schmidt
      • YR8 Kevin Casey
      • YR8 Constantin Preda
      • YR8 Suzanne S. Rancourt
      • YR8 Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz
      • YR8 Judith Kelly Quaempts
      • YR8 Jeff Burt
      • YR8 Michael Keshigian
      • YR8 Ray Ball
    • Issue 9 >
      • YR9 Introduction
      • YR9 Juan Paez
      • YR9 Antoni Ooto
      • YR9 Dennis Trujillo
      • YR9 Kersten Christianson
      • YR9 Stephen Register
      • YR9 Rasma Haidri
      • YR9 John Grey
      • YR9 Terri Glass
      • YR9 Meg Freer - Art
      • YR9 Keith Moul
      • YR9 Thomas Piekarski
      • YR9 Jared Pearce
      • YR9 Sunil Sharma
      • YR9 Paul Bluestein
      • YR9 Linda M. Crate
      • YR9 Meg Freer
      • YR9 Hugh Cook
      • YR9 Marc Carver
      • YR9 Mary Buchinger
      • YR9 Edilson Ferreira
      • YR9 Robert Wexelblatt
      • YR9 Don Thomposon
    • Issue 10 >
      • Issue 10 Introduction
      • YR10 Shannon Elizabeth Gardner
      • YR10 Vikram Masson
      • YR10 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR10 A1 Shelby Lynn Lanaro
      • YR10 Nate Maxson
      • YR10 Ed Ruzicka
      • YR10 Carol Alena Aronoff
      • YR10 Wendy Schmidt
      • YR10 Meg Freer
      • YR10 Marly Youmans
      • YR10 Diane Dickinson
      • YR10 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR10 Susan Blevins
      • YR10 Shelby Lynn Lanaro
      • YR10 McKenzie Lynn Tozan
      • YR10 Christian Mack
      • YR10 Bridget Gage-Dixon
      • YR10 A1 Edward Lee
      • YR10 Richard Luftig
      • YR10 Rachael Nazzaro
      • YR10 Jan Ball
      • YR10 Michael Keshigian
      • YR10 Anne Doran
      • YR10 George Moore
      • YR10 Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal
      • YR10 Fabrice Poussin
      • YR10 Edward Lee
      • YR10 Edilson Ferreira
      • YR10 Juliette Sebock
      • YR10 Eve Lyons
      • YR10 Tamam Kahn
      • YR10 Patrick Haas
      • YR10 Victoria Elizabeth Ruwi
      • YR10 Tim Kahl
      • YR10 Jennifer Stuart
      • YR10 Laura Stringfellow
      • YR10 Mary Anna Kruch
      • YR10 Tracee Clapper
      • YR10 Marianne Szlyk
      • YR10 Robin Wright
      • YR10 Cynthia Elder
      • YR10 Agnes Vojta
      • YR10 Karen Neuberg
      • YR10 Antoni Ooto
      • YR10 DS Maolailai
      • YR10 Cheryl Caesar
      • YR10 Alec Solomita
      • YR10 Hibah Shabkhez
    • Issue 11 >
      • Issue 11 Introduction
      • YR11 MD Marcus
      • YR11 Donna Pucciani
      • YR11 Edilson Ferreira
      • YR11 John Sweet
      • YR11 Holly Day
      • YR11 Antoni Ooto
      • YR11 Judy DeCroce
      • YR11 Mark J. Mitchell
      • YR11 Margaret King
      • YR11 Meg Freer - Poetry
      • YR11 John Grey
      • YR11 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR11 Lily Beaumont
      • YR11 Katherine Johnson
      • YR11 Gary Duehr
      • YR11 Fariel Shafee
      • YR11 Tay Greenleaf
      • YR11 J.I. Kleinberg
      • YR11 Barbara A. Meier
      • YR11 Rebecca Fullan
      • YR11 Duane Anderson
      • YR11 Jennifer Battisti
      • YR11 Dayna Patterson
      • YR11 Fabrice Poussin
      • YR11 Meg Freer - Art
      • YR11 Janina Aza Karpinska
      • YR11 Larry D. Thacker
      • YR11 Bob MacKenzie
    • Issue 12 >
      • YR12 Introduction
      • YR12 Bella Koschalk
      • YR12 Lori Levy
      • YR12 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR12 Barbara A. Meier
      • YR12 Charlotte Fong
      • YR12 Sivakami Velliangiri
      • YR12 Vivian Wagner
      • YR12 Bailey Bujnosek
      • YR12 Joan Leotta
      • YR12 Kelley White
      • YR12 Bob MacKenzie
      • YR12 Richard Luftig
      • YR12 Judith Kelly Quaempts
      • YR12 Janette Schafer
      • YR12 John Kaprielian
      • YR12 Antoni Ooto
      • YR12 Shelby Lynn Lanaro - Poetry
      • YR12 Ann Weil
      • YR12 Ellen Dooling Reynard
      • YR12 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR12 Stephanie Hauer
      • YR12 Stephen Kingsnorth
      • YR12 Cynthia Trenshaw
      • YR12 Shobhana Kumar
      • YR12 Phoebe Backer
      • YR12 Christina Hoag
      • YR12 Shankar Ramakrishnan
      • YR12 Meg Freer
      • YR12 Bob MacKenze - Art
      • YR12 Shelby Lynn Lanaro - Art
      • YR12 Christopher Woods
      • YR12 John L. Stanizzi
    • Issue 13 >
      • YR13 Introduction
      • YR13 Donna Pucciani
      • YR13 Marie C Lecrivain
      • YR13 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR13 George R. Kramer
      • YR13 Vern Fein
      • YR13 Terri Glass
      • YR13 August Smith
      • YR13 Don Thompson
      • YR13 John Raffetto
      • YR13 JBMulligan
      • YR13 Gordon Kippola
      • YR13 Meg Smith
      • YR13 Theric Jepson
      • YR13 Melanie Cox
      • YR13 Shannon Cuthbert
      • YR13 Preeth Ganapathy
      • YR13 Laurinda Lind
      • YR13 Michael Brockley
      • YR13 Lauren Walke
      • YR13 Page Turner
      • YR13 Meg Freer
      • YR13 Cheryl Johnson
      • YR13 Dayna Patterson
      • YR13 Charles J. March III
    • Issue 14 >
      • YR14 Introduction
      • YR14 Agnes Vojta
      • YR14 Michael T. Young
      • YR14 L. Ward Abel
      • YR14 Kelly Morgan
      • YR14 DS Maolalai
      • YR14 Judith Kelly Quaempts
      • YR14 Anneliese Kvamme
      • YR14 Claire Drucker
      • YR14 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR14 August Smith
      • YR14 George Moore
      • YR14 Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
      • YR14 Gena Schwam
      • YR14 Angele Ellis
      • YR14 Matthew Mayes
      • YR14 Jennifer Novotney
      • YR14 Cameron Morse
      • YR14 Shelby Lynn Lanaro
      • YR14 Kate Meyer-Currey
      • YR14 Mark Heathcote
      • YR14 Arlene Weiner
      • YR14 Rebecca Patrascu
      • YR14 Gabrielle Langley
      • YR14 Gary Lark
      • YR14 Michael Keshigian
      • YR14 Cathy Shang
      • YR14 Linda M. Crate
      • YR14 Mark A. Fisher
      • YR14 Jerin Anne Jacob
      • YR14 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR14 Jack D. Harvey
      • YR14 Ana Pugatch
      • YR14 Tracy Donohue
      • YR14 Roger Singer
      • YR14 Judith Ford
      • YR14 Dayna Patterson
      • YR14 Jemma Leigh Roe
      • YR14 Maxwell Suzuki
      • YR14 Meg Freer
    • Issue 15 >
      • YR15 Introduction
      • YR15 Richard Levine
      • YR15 Mark J. Mitchell
      • YR15 Rob Piazza
      • YR15 Luke Maguire Armstrong
      • YR15 Aaron Hahn
      • YR15 Morgan Bazilian
      • YR15 Christopher Clauss
      • YR15 Randel McCraw Helms
      • YR15 Judith Kelly Quaempts
      • YR15 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR15 Lea Galanter
      • YR15 Ursula O'Reilly
      • YR15 Mark Hammerschick
      • YR15 Brendan Todt
      • YR15 Greg Hill
      • YR15 Seth Ketchem
      • YR15 Nolo Segundo
      • YR15 Elizabeth McCarthy
      • YR15 Cameron Morse
      • YR15 Bruce McRae
      • YR15 Stephen Mead
      • YR15 Leslie Dianne
      • YR15 Laura Erekson
      • YR15 Jamie Ortolano
      • YR15 Robin Wright
      • YR15 Lauren Walke
      • YR15 Page Turner
      • YR15 Paola Bidinelli
      • YR15 Edward Lee
    • Issue 16 >
      • YR16 Introduction
      • YR16 Sharon Wright Mitchell
      • YR16 Mitchell Untch
      • YR16 Lynn White
      • YR16 Kate Falvey
      • YR16 Hamad Al-Rayes
      • YR16 Daniel A. Rabuzzi
      • YR16 Damon Hubbs
      • YR16 Tricia Lloyd Waller
      • YR16 Johanna Haas
      • YR16 Meg Freer
      • YR16 Ethan Blakley
      • YR16 Cameron Morse
      • YR16 Michael Keshigian
      • YR16 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR16 Marie-Elizabeth Mali
      • YR16 Allen Ashley
      • YR16 Kersten Christianson
      • YR16 Kyle Singh
      • YR16 Shari Lawrence Pfleeger
      • YR16 GTimothy Gordon
      • YR16 Ursula O'Reilly
      • YR16 Meekha Roper
      • YR16 Fabrice Poussin
      • YR16 Peycho Kanev
      • YR16 Stevenson & Auclair
      • YR16 Wendy K. Mages
      • YR16 Richard Hanus
      • YR16 Cynthia Yatchman
      • YR16 Jared Rich
      • YR16 Carl Scharwath
      • YR16 Kersten Christianson-Art
      • YR16 Meg Freer-Art
    • Issue 17 >
      • YR17 Introduction
      • YR17 Merryn Rutlege
      • YR17 Sigrun Susan Lane
      • YR17 Elizabeth McCarthy
      • YR17 Kersten Christianson
      • YR17 Alixa Brobbey
      • YR17 Sharon Lopez Mooney
      • YR17 Mary Alice Williams
      • YR17 Ann M Lawrence
      • YR17 Lauren Cox
      • YR17 Karla Linn Merrifield
      • YR17 Chloë Rain
      • YR17 Colette Tennant
      • YR17 Anne Whitehouse
      • YR17 Elizabeth Cranford Garcia
      • YR17 Holly Day
      • YR17 Darlene Young
      • YR17 Robin Wright
      • YR17 Sandra Salinas Newton
      • YR17 Nancy Machlis Rechtman
      • YR17 Dorothy Johnson-Laird
      • YR17 Adrienne Stevenson
      • YR17 Diana Raab
      • YR17 Shirley Harshenin
      • YR17 V. Bray
      • YR17 Christa Fairbrother
      • YR17 Ariel Mitchell Williams-Fiction
      • YR17 Ariel Mitchell Williams-NF
      • YR17 Liz Busby
      • YR17 Matina Vossou
      • YR17 Wendy Lou Schmidt
      • YR17 Richard Hanus
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Liz Busby

Self-Portrait in Cookies

In fourth grade, my 14-months-younger sister did a Famous Americans report on Debbie Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields’ Cookies. She made cookies to give out after her report, which made her a smash hit. In the months afterward, she would work her way through every recipe in the Mrs. Field’s Cookbook—lacey oatmeal cookies, windowpane cookies, lemon drizzles—each one turning out delicious.

It was her thing, and I was happy to eat the results. But somehow her success in this area translated to defining myself as the one who couldn’t cook. I suppose it’s the casualty of having a sister just a year younger than you: we were always defining ourselves at opposite ends of everything. My sister took French for her language requirement because it was the language of food and continued to work her way through fancy pies and homemade rolls. I took practical Spanish and stayed out of the kitchen except on my required night to help with dinner. Any mistakes made, I blamed on my innate character as someone who couldn’t cook.

The first thing I made on my own was macaroni and cheese. It was the first time I had been assigned to babysit my younger siblings while my parents were out. I felt grown up and determined to do everything right. How hard could it really be?

What came to the table was more like a soup: limp noodles floating in pale yellow water. I had no idea what I had done wrong until my sister pointed out one tiny word nestled between longer sentences:
    
“Drain.”

These feelings were made worse by the tasks assigned in the Young Women’s Personal Progress program. Bake a loaf of bread and take it to someone. Learn how to plan meals for your family. One sister taught us how to make a box cake mix taste better by using Sprite instead of water. My feminist-minded best friend complained that we should be learning woodworking and how to change a tire like the boys. I didn’t enjoy these activities myself, but I thought that was because I was innately bad at cooking. Deep down, I knew that my eternal progression didn’t hinge on my baking skills, but sometimes, it sure felt like it.
#
There’s a legend in our family of the time Mom took us to the library just after she had put cookies into the oven. Weekly library outings were one of my favorite parts of the summer, a chance to pick out new adventures. My mom had an MA in English and loved reading as much as we did, so we would usually spend hours at the library.
 
We returned home to smoke billowing out of the oven and the fire alarm going off. The forgotten cookies retrieved from the oven looked like charcoal briquettes.

From then on, I don’t remember Mom ever making cookies. In fact, my dad soon became famous for his chocolate chip cookie recipe—his secret was creaming the sugar and butter by hand, never with a mixer. To look at my dad, you would never guess that he loved to flood every place he visited with warm chocolate chip cookies. His six-foot-four frame towered over the kitchen cupboards. His face sported a gruff beard below a balding head. I spent much of my childhood watching him break up fights while refereeing church basketball games. Yet he would frequently tie on an apron and armed with only a bowl, a fork, and a baking stone, churn out dozens of cookies in an afternoon.
 
Mom had never really been much of a cook anyway. Our family meals were mostly box dinners and canned chili and tacos with plain ground beef and ketchup. Perhaps this is why I was content to define myself as someone who couldn’t cook. I was a scholarly woman, like my mom. Of course I couldn’t cook; my time was absorbed with better things. Cooking was reserved for those who were girly girls, like my cousin who sewed her own clothes and went to all the school dances with a large group of friends. Those who focused on grades, who wrote quirky poetry in small notebooks, who solved math puzzles for fun didn’t need to understand the kitchen.
#
The strange thing is I never saw the conflict between my non-cooking identity and my enjoyment of Pie Night.
 
Pie Night was an official family event the night before Thanksgiving at my maternal grandmother’s house. All of my aunts and female cousins would meet to order takeout and make the pies for tomorrow. We would crowd around the long white melamine island of her kitchen, mixing up pie crust in a long assembly line.
 
No, assembly line is much too orderly to describe what happened: Bowls being passed from person to person, and being abandoned to watch a song from White Christmas or grab a slice of pizza. Flour and shortening being slid across the counter to the next person who needed them. Batches that had to be started over because no one knew whether the salt had been added or not. We’d just keep churning out batches of dough until someone did a count and found that we’d made 4 more than we needed.
 
The dough was a simple shortening-based recipe from the 1950s. First, make a paste of ice water and flour. Then cut in the shortening into the remaining flour seasoned with salt. Combine the two mixtures by hand until just crumbly; never overmix or the crust won’t be flaky. Divide into two clumps. Beg someone whose hands haven’t been turned into pie crust clubs to pull out two plastic wrap sheets. Lay one ball on each, carefully extracting your hands. Wrap and flatten slightly and add to the stack in the fridge.
 
We’d roll out crust after crust, filling glass dishes, ceramic dishes, old tins from Marie Calendar’s, and the occasional tart pan. Edges were crimped or marked with a fork, lattices were braided, and extra pie crust was made into pie crust cookies dusted with cinnamon sugar. Giant batches of pumpkin filling would overflow the largest bowl available. Dozens of apples were spun through an apple slicer by children’s arm power, and they’d go away with a long string of apple peel to munch on.
 
Mixed through all this was laughter, discussion of plans for the Thanksgiving morning, movies and shows we’d watched, shopping tips, and catching up on each other’s lives. I was shocked when as a young adult I heard on a cooking show that pie crust was difficult to master. No one had ever told me that what we were doing was hard. Though I had come to my first pie night with a little trepidation about whether I’d mess it up, all fear was soon forgotten in the camaraderie, the festivity of doing it together. Though my sister was still always the one proposing we make a French silk pie or try a more elaborate lattice, I felt competent at Pie Night. There wasn’t any room to question whether I was good or bad at cooking: everyone helped, period, and the credit went to us all.
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I first determined I would need to learn how to cook in my second year of college. When I moved out of the dorms with their never-ending cafeteria buffet to a run-down apartment building, I knew I would have to face my fear of the kitchen. I couldn’t imagine how anyone had the time to cook three meals a day. My days were packed with classes and two part-time jobs; how was I going to find the time to make food? But I also couldn’t afford to eat out, so something would have to be done.
 
I came at cooking sideways with my nerd skills. I made spreadsheets. I found websites where you could enter the ingredients you had and it would spit out something to make with them. My roommates educated me in some things, like the graduate student who taught me that ground beef can be cooked in ways other than in a large bowl in a microwave. (None of them successfully taught me to do my own dishes though, which I still feel guilty about 15 years later.)
 
My mind’s dichotomy between the domestic and the academic finally broke when I came across the television show Good Eats on our apartment cable. Alton Brown’s cooking show is in the vein of Bill Nye the Science Guy with the wacky demonstration models and scientific explanations. That’s when I realized that cooking wasn’t un-similar to the reactions I was managing in organic chemistry. It was all about measuring, understanding why things worked the way they did, and what mattered (or didn’t) to the outcome. Cooking wasn’t a magical gift for Disney princesses and perfectly quaffed housewives. Baking was a replicable result, one that could be learned and managed through attention to detail.
 
After I got married and graduated from BYU, I started a systematic study of Alton Brown’s work, watching grainy pirated episodes of Good Eats on YouTube while feeding our newborn. Season by season, I learned about the Maillard reaction that makes both browned meat and muffins taste so good, why washing mushrooms was not only just fine but necessary, the differences between the muffin method and the cookie method, and how to spatchcock a chicken. Gradually many of the previously canned or frozen products I’d once used were replaced with fresh produce and from-scratch sauces.
 
When we left Utah for Seattle to follow my husband’s work, the food I missed the most was my dad’s chocolate chip cookies. On visits back to Utah, I tried to get his recipe, but it was annoyingly vague in the way that ancestral recipes are. “Two scoops of brown sugar. Blend. Add flour and baking powder.” The main thing I gleaned was the importance of blending the butter and sugars by hand with a fork (something that seemed impossible, due to my impatience at waiting for butter to come to room temperature) and using half dark and half semisweet chocolate chips.
 
I set about applying my dad’s techniques to various cookie recipes but to no avail. Even Alton Brown’s extensive tutorial on how to produce three different types of cookies didn’t unravel the mystery. The infographics of various cookie troubles on Pinterest couldn’t diagnose the problem either. To this day, I still can’t make a chocolate chip cookie to match the one in my childhood memories.
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As a stay-at-home mom, I assumed that baking with my kids was part of the job description, a homey activity where my kids would learn about math, nutrition, chemistry, and family traditions all while finishing with a delicious snack. I undertook it almost as a revenge against my mother for not teaching me how to bake properly. “See? I will do motherhood correctly!” I had visions of my son standing by my side on his little kitchen stool, patiently pouring flour and licking spoons happily but neatly.
 
Turns out, baking with toddlers is nothing at all like that.
 
He would plunge the measuring cup into the flour bin, and white powder would suddenly be all over the counter and floor and the air and my dark red shirt. The cup would always be too full or too empty and half of it wouldn’t make it into the bowl anyway. He couldn’t stand the loud noise of the mixer and fled the kitchen in terror. And I couldn’t handle the mis-matched sizes of his cookie dough balls and ended up sneakily re-rolling them myself.
 
It took twice as long as usual and he was asleep before the first batch had cooled enough to eat.
 
Only after many more years of experience—and the resultant tempering of my perfectionism—I was able to actually bake with my kids without yelling at them.
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Now, when we would travel “home” for the holidays, the food my mom cooked no longer seemed adequate. The food that they so often ordered-in would make my stomach hurt. I would gently question the types of food we were eating and be pushed aside because it was the holidays, so who cared. When we finally moved back to Utah, I was excited to exert some control again over the food at family gatherings.’
 
So I spent the month of December making a different kind of cookies every few days and freezing them in plastic bags to be brought out for the holidays: gingerbread decorated by the kids, snowball cookies, pressed cookies in the shapes of little trees and wreaths, hazelnut cinnamon cookie sandwiches with caramel-filled cut-outs.
 
On Christmas Eve, I arranged the cookies on a platter and proudly placed them on the family buffet. My sister brought in her homemade eclairs. As she stacked the pastries high on the tiered silver serving dish, we nodded acknowledgement of each other’s efforts, like two competitors shaking hands before the final scores were shown. Then Mom came over and began making a fuss over both of our contributions. “I’m so proud my daughters both turned out to be such good cooks. It’s good you’re here to bake these things that I could never make.”
 
This phrase made me squirm. Why did it make me so uncomfortable? I wanted to say anyone could do it, that she could do it if she really wanted to. That being able to cook is a choice. It’s all learned skill. But saying that downplays the amount of work I have put into learning how to bake bread in the shape of a star or make homemade yogurt. I should be proud of my efforts and be grateful that she appreciated me.
 
Maybe it’s because her words felt like a condemnation of her own worth as a mother. Maybe it’s because deep in my heart, I had agreed with that condemnation. I resented other kids who grew up with fabulous homemade memories while we got by with hamburger helper and frozen chicken. Maybe it’s a manifestation of the same old perception that those who make the time to cook from scratch are more morally virtuous than others. A perception that I thought I’d scrubbed from myself but keeps reappearing like an old laundry stain.

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Cooking has experienced an elevated status in recent years, culminating in The Great British Baking Show as mainstream television. Families cheer together as middle-aged mothers, young college students, and zealous engineers scramble to bake perfect sets of shortbread cookies or a three-tier cake themed after their hometown. My kids have seen so much of the show that they will tease me that my bread is “under proofed” when I bring it to the table (though it is most definitely not) and check for soggy bottoms on their Thanksgiving pies.
 
The thing that shocked me out of the constant escalation came out casually one Sunday night on the weekly family phone call with my in-laws.
 
One of my nieces had decided to go vegetarian, and it had made life hard for her mother, a stay-at-home mom a little younger than me. “Ordering meal kits has made it so much easier to find meals that all of us can eat. And I only have to pick up a few things when I go shopping, which makes it much easier to get done with a baby and toddler. It’s really reducing my stress a lot.”
My sister-in-law, about to start her job as a professor in the fall, agreed, “Yes, I don’t know how we’d get dinner on the table without it.”
 
I hesitantly stepped in, “Isn’t it tons more expensive?”
 
“Not really,” they both chimed in, and began comparing the notes on the merits of various brands they had tried. I kept grasping at straws trying to figure out what was wrong here. It made sense for my professional sister-in-law to buy meal kits, but how could it be justified if you were at home all day. It seemed morally wrong somehow not to plan your own meals for your family, like cheating at motherhood.
 
It took me months to admit the real problem: I was jealous.
 
Even all these years after my sister’s Famous Americans report, I was still basing my worth and the worth of other mothers on their food. If a family we invited over for dinner brought a store-bought side dish, I wondered what was wrong at home. I sneered at the Costco cookies at the church party. I had become a food snob.
 
And yet, I was so tired of all of it. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for 13 years, years I worked on perfecting the craft of cooking, of making a meal with no pre-made sauces and only fresh vegetables, because it seemed the only thing to do. The right way.
 
But does virtue really come in making your own pasta sauce over buying one ready-made? I could make homemade naan to go with the butter chicken I’ve cooked and veggies I’ve chopped, but would the outcome be worth the time and mess? Even after all the cookies I’ve made over the years, my husband still prefers Oreos to almost any other cookie. And I was exhausted, spending an hour cooking dinner every night, only to find that at least half of my kids found it completely inedible. Why was I doing it? Who was I proving myself to?
 
And so I begin the work again of unwinding my self-worth from cooking. I cross off the elaborate meals that require preparing three recipes simultaneously. I buy the flatbread and the tortillas and the baguettes that I am perfectly capable of making myself. I allow myself to make a boxed mac and cheese for my kids’ lunch. I buy the occasional meal kit.
 
I feed my kids the store-bought cookies.
 


Liz Busby is a writer of speculative fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as book reviews and other literary criticism, particularly about the intersection between Mormonism and science fiction/fantasy. Currently, she is a stay-at-home mom who enjoys long-distance running, knitting, and escape rooms. Liz recently moved from Bellevue, Washington, back to her home state of Utah, where she lives in Highland with her husband, George, and their four children.


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