Answer: "Creeping Australian BooBoo"

The question: "What was the first recipe Mollie Katzen created?"

My favourite Web find of the day is not a practice tool, not a research article, not even a seasonal recipe. No, it's a  brief anecdote about the joy of creativity and discovery in the kitchen.

How and when did you [Mollie Katzen] start cooking?
I started make-believe cooking when I was a toddler, using invisible ingredients, plus grass, flowers, and mud. I started cooking with real food when I was about 8 or 9. My mother and grandmother let me follow them around the kitchen, and I was entranced. I tested and wrote my first recipe when I was 9. It was for a chocolate dessert that leaked out of the oven door and across the floor. My wonderful, patient mother, instead of yelling at me, said, "Well this is certainly original. Let's give it a name." We called it "Creeping Australian BooBoo." Lacking the good sense to be deterred, I went on to write many more recipes over the next 35+ years. Somewhere along the way, I figured out how to have things stay in the oven.

Source: About Mollie

I'm so relieved and grateful Mollie's mom didn't scold her daughter about the "mess." Could you imagine vegetarian cookery without a Moosewood Cookbook or Enchanted Broccoli Forest?

Comments

[Arwen from Hoglet K]

That's such a great story, and an amazingly patient mum! It goes to show that everyone has to start somewhere.