The Love of Cooking

Growing up, I was always in the kitchen with my grandmother. Many profess, “My grandma is the best cook!” Well, this statement is definitely validated once tasting any of my grandmother’s savory dishes. She just has an innate way of combining ingredients that simply makes your taste buds explode! Eating food that good makes it very hard to stop. It feels as though each piece is screaming, “Eat me! Eat me!” as if your stomach is a bottomless pit, being stuffed “to infinity and beyond!” 

My whole life, I have attempted to recreate her wonderful recipes but I could never produce an exact replica. Often times I have thought, “It’s good, but it’s not like grandma’s.” I’ve realized that I have been missing a fundamental ingredient: love. Every dish my grandmother creates is made out of affection. She doesn’t cook to flaunt her abilities but to nourish the bodies of her loved ones. Creating her masterpieces signifies a particular message. Each meal is like a love letter that expresses all the warmth and happiness she feels when she thinks of us, wrapped up, and sealed with perfection. To my grandmother, feeding our family is her art. It is her modality used to explore her creativity and most importantly, share her passion.

Vocabulary:

validate (verb) - to prove correct

savory (adjective) - having a pleasant taste or smell

innate (adjective) - natural

“To infinity and beyond!” (prepositional phrase) - a quote from the movie Toy Story; going past the thinkable world

replica (noun) - copy

fundamental (adjective) - necessary, important

flaunt (verb) - to show off

nourish (verb) - provide food for growth and health

signifies (verb) - to mean something
modality (noun) - mode, way

Vocabulary Exercise: Match the correct vocabulary word to its definition. 

1. validate                                                           a. provide food for growth and heath

2. savory                                                             b. copy

3. innate                                                              c. mode, way

4. to infinity and beyond                                     d. to mean something

5. replica                                                             e. having a pleasant taste or smell

6. fundamental                                                    f. natural

7. flaunt                                                               g. going past the thinkable world

8. nourish                                                            h. to show off

9. signifies                                                           i. to prove correct

10. modality                                                        j. necessary, important

Grammar Point: Quotations represent words spoken, or written, by someone typically other than the writer. The passage above uses this literary technique often. For example: Many profess, “My grandma is the best cook!”  There are a few important grammar points to keep in mind when writing a sentence with a quotation. Notice, a comma is placed before the opening quotation mark, the sentence within the quotation marks starts with a capital letter, and the punctuation is placed before the ending quotation mark. Using this knowledge, please properly compose four sentences with quotations.