@piratejenny
I started learning vegetarian cooking from my mother when I was about five or six. She cooked for several restaurants over the years...every morning when I was getting ready for kindergarten, she would be in the kitchen making flour tortillas to fill up the spackle bucket on a chair next to the stove, for her boyfriend to take to the restaurant he ran. She would cook it on the comal (flat round cast iron griddle), then brown it over an open flame. I would wait for one that didn't just get bubbles, but puffed up perfectly all the way around, like a balloon, and it eat it with butter and honey! My grandmother was a great cook too, and although she was not a vegetarian and she wouldn't even let me grate cheese, I learned just by watching and smelling while she cooked! We moved away when I was 8, so I didn't learn as much as I now wish I had, but she started every meal by smashing up fresh garlic & cumin seeds in a molcajete (mortar & pestle made of volcanic rock) and then frying it...it would go into rice, refried beans, chicken dishes, and is still one of my favorite smells in the whole world... I am not a vegetarian now, but I didn't start cooking meat until I was about 21 or 22...so I'm still not great at cooking meat, and I'd rather make pot roast or stew than frying, grilling, or baking meat.