Step 1: Remove Shoes From Oven Before Preheating

All of my kids can cook, partly because they grew up seeing me cook, but also because, being homeschooled, they had plenty of time at home to learn by watching and doing. But I guess I underestimated just how few of today's adults grew up knowing at least the very basics of cooking. According to this,

Despite the popularity of the Food Network cooking shows on cable TV, and the burgeoning number of food magazines and gourmet restaurants, today's cooks have fewer kitchen skills than their parents -- or grandparents -- did.

The article's author notes that most of today's young adults had full-time working moms, which reduced the number of times they were exposed to meals prepared from scratch. Another important factor is that home economics cooking classes were eliminated from most schools for about 20 years (they're coming back as electives).

Some people are apparently quite clueless about how to cook and bake:

"We're now two generations into a lack of culinary knowledge being passed down from our parents," said Richard Ruben, a New York cooking teacher whose classes for non-cooks draw a range of participants, from 18-year-olds leaving for college who want to have survival skills to 60-year-olds who have more time to cook but don't know how.

"In my basic 'How to Cook' class, I get people who have only used their ovens to store shoes and sweaters," he said. "They're terrified to hold a knife. They don't know what garlic looks like."

I'm so glad my kids grew up on home-cooked food and learned to appreciate it. While they may not always have time to cook that way now that they're adults, that knowledge will be there when they need it. (Side note: as I write this, the house is filling with the aroma of the brownies dd16 just made. There are definitely advantages to homeschool home ec!)