Happy Birthday to my Mom!

Today I would like to write about my mom.  She is the first person to introduce me into cooking.  She is the basis of my food driven existence.  My mom was born in Allen County and grew up on a farm.  Like most good farm families, the table was always full of comfort food, made from what they grew or raised.  The pantry had home canned vegetables and fruit from the garden and orchard.  The freezer was full of chicken, beef and pork.  The refrigerator always had fresh free-range eggs, a jug of ice tea and fresh turned butter.

I grew up living off the land and still appreciate the simple way of cooking with a little twist of flavor depth and complexity as my food journey has advanced.

Growing up my mom was the best cinnamon roll baker on earth.  To this day, I have a hard time eating cinnamon rolls from a bakery, they seem to have an artificial taste to them and dry in texture.  My mom could whip a batch of cinnamon rolls like no tomorrow.

Every dinner we had a meat (protein), vegetable and some sort of potato dish.  Most of the time it was just simple home-grown items on our table.  I would have to say my mom to this day still likes sweet things and if you go to her house, you can usually sniff out a cookie, brownie, a slice of pie or some sweet treat of some sort.  Each meal usually had something sweet to eat after we finished off our meal we could have dessert.  I usually loved all of mom’s meals, except liver and onions.  Yuck!  To this day just the mention of liver and onions turn my tummy.  There is not enough ketchup in the world to mask the flavor of liver, that was cooked to death and covered up with onions.  I actually was a bit sneaky; I found a shelf under our dining table right where I sat.  Somehow that liver would jump off my plate, onto my napkin and on to the shelf unseen by my mom.  To this day I have no clue how I got away with that one.  In all those 20 years of living with her, did I ever get caught disposing of the liver.  I would go back after the dishes were cleaned up and gave the liver a proper burial down the toilet.

We had chores we had to do each day and each week.  We didn’t get paid for those chores in form of money, but in a form of respect to our parents, education on how a house was to be cleaned, ran and enjoyed, let alone the food in our tummies, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs.  If we wanted to earn extra money we had to do extra chores.

Most of the daily chores was helping make meals.  At a young age my mom had us kids bellied up to the stove, counter, sink, whatever to help out in the kitchen.  We knew at a young age how to use a knife, how to whip, stir, or mix a recipe.  We were taught how to read a recipe and how to adjust the recipe to taste even better.  At this point I think is where I learned to cook without a recipe, but cooked by seeing, by texture and by taste.  A little bit more of this or that became a part of the recipe I engraved in my mind.

My mom didn’t allow us to make the mess in the kitchen without cleaning up after ourselves.  Ask my nieces, I sure can make a mess of the kitchen, but I put a whole lot of love into the recipe.  We took turns one week I would help cook and the next week I had to help do dishes.  I suppose I probably tried to get out of doing the dishes more times than not, but I sure did enjoy working beside my mom making dinner each night.  It is funny, I don’t really remember her actually teaching us how to do it, we just worked beside her and pick up on what she was doing.  To this day I still call her for cooking advise, or could you text me grandma’s recipe for X?  Also, to this day I still can’t make her potato salad.  I have made it side by side with her, made sure I had the right brands of ingredients, and I guess I just don’t’ have the love she puts into it, because mine never taste as good as hers.

In my teenage years I remember thinking, man I wish I could go into town with my friends and hang out at the pool, go to ball park or just walk around and have fun.  Instead, I was stuck at home wrapping the meat that was just butchered (it cost less if you wrapped it yourself back in the day), tending to the garden, canning the fresh vegetables or fruits for the winter meals or making homemade bread or a yummy apple pie.  I was jealous back then, thinking all I do is work, I never get to do what my friends are doing.  Well one of mom’s favorite lines was if you friends jumped off a cliff are you going to be dumb enough to follow them?  The answer was always no, with a little bit of disappointment in my voice, knowing my mom was right. 

Mom was our 4-H leader and she made sure we learned how to lead and how to take instruction to follow, accept correction gracefully, and to do the best you can do.  We wore homemade clothes, hand me downs and things that were not in style, but what my parents could afford.  They were always clean and never had a hole.  She taught us to sew, mend, how to garden, how to can.  How lucky was I to have this background?  I think pretty darn lucky!

Mom taught me to do a job well and to accept shortcuts end up taking more time in the long run, so just do it and do right the first time.  Make time for family because you never know what tomorrow will bring and to make sure you are kind, Godly, respectful and helpful.

Thank you, mom, for all you have done for us preparing us for life!  Hope your Birthday is a good one! Happy 84^th Birthday to the best mom!