If you’re expecting something porny based on the title, you”ll be sorely disappointed. But I hear My Little Redhead Midget Part 2 is pretty good if you’re into that sort of thing.

I can cook.

I mean cook. This never ceases to amaze me, because in my head I’m still the teenager who could barely boil water, the neophyte whose mother brought the turkey the first few times I hosted Thanksgiving. Trial and error, a discerning eye for recipes I like, a few tried and tested techniques. I can cook.

Hauling out the slow cooker and the stock pot more often since Christmas, I’ve reflected on these simple acts: choosing a recipe, shopping, putting chef’s knife to shallot, sauteing, roasting, broiling. Nourishing my family.

My mother has not been well, and my two local sisters and I have jumped into the only action we know how to take to fix the here-and-now. M. takes Mondays and Wednesdays. A. takes the weekends. I’ve got Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday is a free-for-all: sometimes it’s leftovers, sometimes it’s takeout.

Without my Superman husband and exceptional brother in law, I’m not sure how we’d do it. This is us. Shoveling, vacuuming, getting the newspapers when it’s too icy for my father to go out. My brother-in-law covers transportation to a doctor’s appointment. My husband builds a banister for the three steps leading to the basement. My youngest scrubs the kitchen floor. And we cook.

A few well-worn cookbooks guide me in my kitchen. Mark Bittman is my guru, and his How to Cook Everything tome changed my approach to many well-loved dishes. Sometimes as I puzzle over what to do next, I tell my husband bring me Bittman! (I always find an answer in its well-worn yellow cover).

In a recent Minimalist column on stocking a pantry for the new year, he makes his usual no-nonsense points. I’m slowly implementing a few. First, canned beans are a convenience and dried are so much better, even if they require a bit of planning ahead. Last week I soaked and then slow-cooked  Great Northern beans with some garlic and rosemary. With a little pasta and parmesan, oh my. Second, tubes of tomato paste make so much more sense than those stupid little wasteful cans. And finally, homemade stock trumps anything from a can, any day of the week.

I had forgotten this truth, attributing the preference to food snobs and people with entirely too much time on their hands. But so much of what I’ve been making lately calls for stock, and invariably what comes from the can is overly-salted and underwhelming. Today, I decided to test the theory, picking up some chicken thighs and an onion while strolling among the Dawn of the Dead at the local Stop & Slop (“I see dumb people”).

She kept my dinner warm in the oven when I was at high school swim practice and sat at the table with me while I ate, sometimes ready to fall asleep in my potato. Packed my lunch when all I wanted was the same five foods over and over (Dr. Pepper I can pour over my apple? Sure, why not?). Helped me set up my grad school kitchen, when I was filled with so much doubt about how I’d actually feed myself. Found a no-fail recipe for angel food cake with chocolate icing when I wanted it for more birthdays than I can count.

When I got home, I roughly chopped and sauteed an onion and shallot. An unpeeled carrot. Stringy celery. Parsley past its prime. Garlic. Mushrooms. Water. Chicken thighs. Boil. Simmer. And I set about my prep work for chicken paprikash. Enough for six: me, my husband, my children, my parents.

An hour later, I tentatively put my spoon into the stockpot to check on my work: a revelation. This, I thought. This is what love tastes like.