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My grandmother was a great cook. In long, black baking pans, she made wonderful strudel with nuts, cinnamon, and jam wrapped in paper-thin dough. For chicken soup, she made huge kneidlach (matzah balls) that were soft and moist and filled with grebenes (pieces of chicken skin fried in fat with onions).

Her cholent for Shabbat baked on the stove all of Friday night until it was eaten at mid-day after shul. The fragrance of that cooking mixture (potatoes, brisket, beans, carrots, and onions) could have brought a king to his knees. Her gefilte fish, eaten hot, straight from the pot, was unforgettable, and I have yet to find anyone who knows how to make the pickled fish, both pink and white, that made relatives flock to her house to eat.

Unfortunately, she never wrote down any of her recipes. I never asked how she made these delicacies and she never pushed this learning on anyone.

After years of helping my grandmother entertain most of the Jewish world, my mother became a good cook, too, but her menu was more Americanized. She did no baking because my father worked for a wholesale bakery, but she made superb rice pudding, meat loaf, blueberry blintzes, pot roast, and vegetarian liver. She made a fishy spread for canapés that could have been served to the president. I never learned how to make any of her specialties either and she didn't push it.

Although I took a home economics class in middle school, the only things I learned to cook there were stewed prunes and cinnamon toast. Thus, when I got married, I didn't even know how to boil water -- literally. I looked into the pot trying to figure out exactly how much movement in the hot water constituted boiling.

The first dinner company I had was in a tiny studio apartment with one window that looked out on a brick wall. The kitchen appliances were behind a floor length Venetian blind. My first guest, a friend of my husband's, sat with us on folding chairs at our bridge table and ate canned tomato soup with frozen fish sticks. He dutifully complimented me on the meal but dined with us in restaurants thereafter.

My first pot roast burned my new Farberware pot so badly that I wanted to throw it away. My husband soaked and scrubbed it until his fingers bled but saved the pot, part of an engagement gift set we still have.

In those years, I could have told you how many movements in a symphony, who composed most of the music on WQXR, which poets wrote which poems, and the story of every opera you could name.

I read novels in French, took court testimony at 140 words per minute, and found my place easily in a Hebrew prayer book any time I attended a synagogue service. I made $5 more per week than my husband. But cooking? Who needed to know that? Why would I want my hands to smell of onions or garlic? I was more interested in Chanel #5 perfume.

Then I had three kids, and the story changed. I had to know how to cook. We had no microwave, there were no take-out restaurants, and parents were far away. I was on a budget and my kids had to have a balanced meal every night. My mother took pity on me. She bought me a Jewish cookbook and I acquired another from my temple sisterhood. I wore out the pages, but I learned.

Though I never became an expert cook, nobody starved. I even developed a few specialties of my own like cherry noodle pudding and pepper steak. I learned to kill the onion and garlic odors on my hands by rubbing them with lemon.

By the time my last child left for college, my husband and I were trying to reduce our expanding waistlines and cholesterol counts. My interest in cooking, however ephemeral, waned.

Along came retirement. Suddenly, we had the time to take cruise vacations. Let me tell you, if you didn't pay much attention to food until then, cruising opened your eyes. For seven to 10 days, you sit in an ocean-view dining room with crystal chandeliers and live classical music in the background. Every night, you spend two hours at dinner sampling gastronomic delights prepared by chefs from around the globe.

Cold fruit soups -- berry, peach, and pear. Cream of asparagus soup with garlic and slivered almonds. Miso soup with the appropriate condiments. Ossobuco. Three colors of caviar. And the desserts! Too beautiful to destroy by eating. You begin to appreciate that the way food is presented on the plate can enhance a meal.

One night I had a dessert to die for -- white chocolate with orange flan. It was so good I hated to eat the last bite because it would be over. When the chef, a mountain of a man in white with a tall hat, circulated among the diners that night, he stopped at our table. I raved about the soup and the flan.

"Did you know that our cruise line offers a cookbook?" he asked.

Needless to say, I bought the cookbook and I'm making stuff my mother and grandmother never dreamed of. Sometimes I even conjure up my own dishes. No, I don't write down my recipes. Who would want them?

Toby Rosenstrauch, an award-winning columnist, lives in Boynton Beach, Fla.