Non-Cook of the month
October, 2011
Pro Bake Non-Cook Erin O'Connor
Interview With Non-Cook of the Month
Erin O'Connor
Erin O'Connor
Erin O'Connor holds an M.S. in early childhood education from Johns Hopkins University and has worked extensively as an early childhood art educator including stints in various museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Parrish Art Museum. She currently teaches at the Hayground School.
Erin worked on answering Picky Grouchy Non-Cook questions over the summer vacation...
Picky Grouchy Non-Cook: I know you are firmly identified with your non-cook type. What is a Pro-Bake Non-Cook?
Erin O'Connor: Someone who likes to bake pretty much anything but who is at a loss or feels put upon when required to create a balanced meal.
PGN-C: How did you come to realize that you are a Pro-Bake Non-Cook?
Erin O'Connor: As a kid, mixing various tasty treats together was the beginning of my cooking experience. I often undertook these adventures with my cousin Joy while visiting my grandmother. Rice Crispies over chocolate ice cream, preferably topped with mini-marshmallows, was one favorite recipe. These mini-marshmallows also served as food to the local pigeons outside my great-grandmother’s second-floor apartment window. We had great fun tossing marshmallows to the hungry birds who were appreciative of my efforts.
I never knew I was a non-cook. I approached my banana and butter sandwiches with aplomb, made toasted jelly-and-egg sandwiches for my little brother under his admiring eyes. How was I to know I was a fraud?
Cooking for my brother turned into baking for friends, for holidays, for fun, for a snack. When I was a single twenty-something, friends actually came to my apartment for meals! Pasta or burritos, sure, but I felt ok about the whole thing. People were hungry and I was feeding them! It was only when I dated and then married my now-husband that I started to figure out that I was no cook. A non-cook. He is a self-taught natural cook. He can come to your house, rummage through your fridge and whip up an attractive, nutritious and tasty meal a la Iron Chef. The need for me to cook became less and less. I stuck to muffins and making my own yogurt.
One day at the beach, a television personality of old who cooks and does craftsy things (a self-styled twenty-something Martha Stewart) was talking to my spouse about cooking. She asked me if I cooked. “Well, I like to bake,” I replied.
“Oh, well you are a scientist and your husband is an artist,” she stated. As a fact.
A punch in the stomach. Not to insult you scientists out there, but I always considered myself to be artistic. Yeah, really. I think life is an art, I pour all of myself into everything I do, even cleaning the toilet! It reminded me of when in art school, it was discussed that printmaking (which I loved, of course), was a “lesser” art than painting and sculpture. Sigh. Who assigns these hierarchies, anyway? Wasn’t Leonardo both a scientist and an artist?
At meals my younger son will state, “Daddy is a good cooker…” then he looks at me apologetically and says hopefully, “…and Mommy makes good cakes?”
I only came to realize I was a Pro-bake Non-Cook after discussing the matter with The Picky Grouchy Non-Cook. She made me realize that being a Non-Cook was ok. It didn’t mean that you couldn’t cook, just that you realized you were not a “Cook.” But I do love to bake and to eat baked goods. Thus the category was born.
PGN-C: So it was! For you, an accomplished Pro-Bake N-C, what is the difference between baking and cooking?
Erin O'Connor: Baking is fun. Cooking fills me with anxiety. Baking always turns out right. Even if I am missing an ingredient or flub up and put in too much salt, I can always salvage something. Not so when I cook. Salad dressing eludes me to this day. Baking fills me with a sense of accomplishment. Cooking, well. I’m just relieved when it’s over. But it never feels finished. Also, I think I’ve made peace with the scientist vs. artist business. I do like to experiment with things I find in the kitchen. I do compare honey and cinnamon to sugar and cinnamon on my cinnamon toast. It’s adventurous and playful. So what if my food is an extra, unnecessary aspect of one’s diet? Isn’t that art for art’s sake?
Erin O'Connor: Someone who likes to bake pretty much anything but who is at a loss or feels put upon when required to create a balanced meal.
PGN-C: How did you come to realize that you are a Pro-Bake Non-Cook?
Erin O'Connor: As a kid, mixing various tasty treats together was the beginning of my cooking experience. I often undertook these adventures with my cousin Joy while visiting my grandmother. Rice Crispies over chocolate ice cream, preferably topped with mini-marshmallows, was one favorite recipe. These mini-marshmallows also served as food to the local pigeons outside my great-grandmother’s second-floor apartment window. We had great fun tossing marshmallows to the hungry birds who were appreciative of my efforts.
I never knew I was a non-cook. I approached my banana and butter sandwiches with aplomb, made toasted jelly-and-egg sandwiches for my little brother under his admiring eyes. How was I to know I was a fraud?
Cooking for my brother turned into baking for friends, for holidays, for fun, for a snack. When I was a single twenty-something, friends actually came to my apartment for meals! Pasta or burritos, sure, but I felt ok about the whole thing. People were hungry and I was feeding them! It was only when I dated and then married my now-husband that I started to figure out that I was no cook. A non-cook. He is a self-taught natural cook. He can come to your house, rummage through your fridge and whip up an attractive, nutritious and tasty meal a la Iron Chef. The need for me to cook became less and less. I stuck to muffins and making my own yogurt.
One day at the beach, a television personality of old who cooks and does craftsy things (a self-styled twenty-something Martha Stewart) was talking to my spouse about cooking. She asked me if I cooked. “Well, I like to bake,” I replied.
“Oh, well you are a scientist and your husband is an artist,” she stated. As a fact.
A punch in the stomach. Not to insult you scientists out there, but I always considered myself to be artistic. Yeah, really. I think life is an art, I pour all of myself into everything I do, even cleaning the toilet! It reminded me of when in art school, it was discussed that printmaking (which I loved, of course), was a “lesser” art than painting and sculpture. Sigh. Who assigns these hierarchies, anyway? Wasn’t Leonardo both a scientist and an artist?
At meals my younger son will state, “Daddy is a good cooker…” then he looks at me apologetically and says hopefully, “…and Mommy makes good cakes?”
I only came to realize I was a Pro-bake Non-Cook after discussing the matter with The Picky Grouchy Non-Cook. She made me realize that being a Non-Cook was ok. It didn’t mean that you couldn’t cook, just that you realized you were not a “Cook.” But I do love to bake and to eat baked goods. Thus the category was born.
PGN-C: So it was! For you, an accomplished Pro-Bake N-C, what is the difference between baking and cooking?
Erin O'Connor: Baking is fun. Cooking fills me with anxiety. Baking always turns out right. Even if I am missing an ingredient or flub up and put in too much salt, I can always salvage something. Not so when I cook. Salad dressing eludes me to this day. Baking fills me with a sense of accomplishment. Cooking, well. I’m just relieved when it’s over. But it never feels finished. Also, I think I’ve made peace with the scientist vs. artist business. I do like to experiment with things I find in the kitchen. I do compare honey and cinnamon to sugar and cinnamon on my cinnamon toast. It’s adventurous and playful. So what if my food is an extra, unnecessary aspect of one’s diet? Isn’t that art for art’s sake?
This is a picture of of some vegetables with faces some students of Erin's made. A good way to deal with food.
PGN-C: As an effective pre-school teacher, you must be nurturing, which is not a characteristic generally associated with the non-cook. Could you comment on the quality of being nurturing?
Erin O'Connor: I am a playful nurturing type of preschool teacher. I like to muck around with play-dough, explore the bugs currently living in the sandbox, let the kids paint with their hands on the table, play with the flour before we make cookies. This is not unlike my early forays into cooking with my cousin Joy, putting all manner of things together to make our breakfast. Even if I do not cook as well as I could, I try to approach it with the same playfulness that I do working with kids. I sometimes feel guilty as a mom who is not a cook, but the boys are very supportive of my efforts and I let them help when my husband is away (that’s usually when I cook dinner). Then it’s not all on me! And I think baking is the ultimate in nurturing. Nothing is more comforting that a warm pumpkin chocolate chip muffin and a cup of tea.
Erin O'Connor: I am a playful nurturing type of preschool teacher. I like to muck around with play-dough, explore the bugs currently living in the sandbox, let the kids paint with their hands on the table, play with the flour before we make cookies. This is not unlike my early forays into cooking with my cousin Joy, putting all manner of things together to make our breakfast. Even if I do not cook as well as I could, I try to approach it with the same playfulness that I do working with kids. I sometimes feel guilty as a mom who is not a cook, but the boys are very supportive of my efforts and I let them help when my husband is away (that’s usually when I cook dinner). Then it’s not all on me! And I think baking is the ultimate in nurturing. Nothing is more comforting that a warm pumpkin chocolate chip muffin and a cup of tea.
This is a picture of Erin crying when she was a little girl. What does it have to do with being a Pro Bake non-Cook? Well -- sometimes we cry. And sometimes other people cry. And sometimes we do manage to nurture and comfort with our non-cook food, especially when it is baked.
PGN-C: If you could not cook, but bake a tea party treat for a group of people -- anyone in the world living or dead -- who would be in that group?
Erin O'Connor: Of course, you want to invite people who not only appreciate baked goods and tea but who would be fun to hang with. I think the Dalai Lama would enjoy a good tea party, as would Kermit the frog. Is it ok if they’re not real?
PGN-C: Totally ok! Anyone else?
Erin O'Connor: Charles Shultz, so I could discuss Snoopy and Linus with him, although I’d also like to have Linus and Snoopy, too. Billie Holliday, Katharine Hepburn, my cousin Joy and sister Anne (who would really have liked to meet Katharine Hepburn), Scarlett O’Hara (I’d get her to pop her corset!), the 1996 Yankees team, my boys and of course, you, PGN-C!
Erin O'Connor: Of course, you want to invite people who not only appreciate baked goods and tea but who would be fun to hang with. I think the Dalai Lama would enjoy a good tea party, as would Kermit the frog. Is it ok if they’re not real?
PGN-C: Totally ok! Anyone else?
Erin O'Connor: Charles Shultz, so I could discuss Snoopy and Linus with him, although I’d also like to have Linus and Snoopy, too. Billie Holliday, Katharine Hepburn, my cousin Joy and sister Anne (who would really have liked to meet Katharine Hepburn), Scarlett O’Hara (I’d get her to pop her corset!), the 1996 Yankees team, my boys and of course, you, PGN-C!