Bound by mixing bowls & recipes: through a holiday memory, one woman discovers that cooking isn't just about food.(SLICE OF LIFE)

I don't cook on a regular day, let alone a holiday. As soon as someone even mentions cooking to me, I have a classic, conditioned response involving my eyeballs immediately rolling up into my head. (Pavlov's dogs have nothing on me.) My non-cooking ability is so profound that my friends mock it.

I'm not sure why I'm so kitchen-incompetent since I'm from a long line of women who make Martha Stewart look like an amateur. One day I'm 11 and in the kitchen with my mom while she cooks a Christmas dinner she could sell tickets to. The next, I'm 36 and overworked, living on takeout.

As I spent time thinking about all the Christmas dinners my mom has cooked compared to the, uh, none that I have, it came to me without warning: I can cook. I have cooked. And for a Christmas dinner no less! I made my grandmother's strawberry bread recipe and produced the kind of mouth-watering deliciousness people should write poetry about.

I was in high school, and it was a Christmas like all the others then. My dad walked around the house in his candy cane socks singing carols. And my mom was in the kitchen fixing up a feast fit for 50 kings.

My two grandmothers were there helping, too, just like they always did then. And in between the noises of pots clanging on the stove and pans banging into the oven was the sound I have come to associate so fondly with all of my holiday memories: the constant, almost musical chatter among women packed happily together into a slightly too small kitchen, bumping elbows while still successfully managing to cook 10 things at once.

Of course, I was hanging around too. Even then, I had already begun carefully crafting my life into the no-cook zone I occupy today. As such, my own contributions to these events were usually confined to activities that didn't involve knowing my teaspoon from my tablespoon. I'd organize the relish tray or arrange the rolls on the baking sheet. But for whatever reason that year, I agreed to my grandmother's request to make her strawberry bread.

I know what you're thinking: There's no way that bread came out okay, let alone delicious. Maybe not. Truthfully, I don't really remember. (I know I ...