Answers to this week’s question over at https://thefridayfive.livejournal.com/214890.html

1. What is your favorite meal to order in a restaurant?

Lehtipihvi (leaf steak, a steak that is about 3-5mm thick and large) with French fries.

2. What is your favorite home cooked meal?

Fried vendace and mashed potatoes, as made by my Mom and her SO. Mom fries the fish just right, and her SO makes the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever tasted.

3. What was the best meal you ever ate?

I’m not sure. It’s not the food through, it’s always the company that would make it #1.

4. Do you ever try to re-create a meal you’ve eaten that someone else cooked?

I’ve tried to re-create many of the foods and meals my Mom makes. I just can’t get them to taste the same even though I do exactly like she does. They taste good, but not the same.

5. What’s the first meal you tried cooking yourself?

No idea. I was always under hand and foot when I was a kid when Mom and Dad cooked or baked. I’d help them chop things, measure flour, sugar etc. I learned to cook and bake by watching them and helping them. I do remember that by the time we had home economics in years 8 and 9, and got the home work assignment to plan and cook a meal from scratch for the family, that I had already done that enough times that that I was an old hat at it (while some of my class mates never had cooked or done anything but eat in the kitchen if it wasn’t a home assignment and the full meal was very difficult for them while for me it was easy). Although even then I preferred baking over cooking, and did a lot of that on my own after school even when I was just like 10 or 11 years old and was alone at home.

My Mom used to say that she never knew what she’d come home to from work – nice and clean kitchen, or a little bit of flour on the floor, all baking utensil waiting to be washed and bakes cooling. I was better baker than cleaner LOL But I was never scolded for that – Mom said later when I wondered about it as an adult, that Dad and her thought it was better than I’d get used to doing stuff and using the kitchen and that in time I’d learn to clean better too; that it’s a good thing a kid learns to feel that the kitchen is theirs too! They were right – a friend of mine never baked or cooked as a kid except for home work assignments; her parents didn’t like her messing up the kitchen so she never learned except for school and never enjoys it 30+ years later. She eats mostly take out even though she likes home cooked food a lot. But she’s never gotten over the scolding and feels like she’s doing a bad thing if she messes up the kitchen even a little and no matter how well she cleans up after.