“Moms and Food go Together”

By

Gerry Niskern

We all know that the mothers we see on greeting cards with the saintly smiles aren’t really mom. She’s usually a complex set of contradictions. So I asked a few people a simple question. At least, I thought it was. “What food reminds you of your mother?”

I was expecting some sweet answers that would make a nice Mother’s Day Blog. Was I wrong!

One friend recalled with a shudder, that as a child in Chattanooga, Tennessee, “My mother believed in ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do!’ Everyone in the South ate a lot of greens. Mother made plain boiled collards, turnip greens, and kale and water cress with no seasoning.  I do I think my father drew the line at dandy lions. Although he never objected in front of us, we only had them one time”

My own daughter tells me she never sees a Cheerios box that she doesn’t think of the time that she and her brother were happily eating their Cheerios as their dad was leaving for work. Grandma arrived and announced “I’m here to take care of you. Your mother is in the hospital because you kids are driving her crazy.” They both looked at their baby brother. Of course. It must have been him!

One man said that anytime he sees peanut butter he thinks of a disastrous Mother’s day. “My dad gave mom the Bentwood rocker that she had been requesting for years.  He took her out to dinner and we kids were on our own. I made myself a triple decker peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich. My brother ran by and grabbed it. I threw my shoe at him just as he ducked behind the new Bentwood. All the slats in the back were shattered. The rest of the story is too sad to tell.”

I did get a couple of nostalgic stories. A friend said that she happened to be squeezing lemon juice and she had been thinking of how her mother used to make candied lemon and orange peels. Her mother was a Lebanese bride of an arranged marriage and among the many talents she brought to this country was how to preserve delicious citrus peel. My friend says that she’s never been able to duplicate it.

My resident historian always thinks of his mom when he has pinto beans. She cooked them in a black Dutch oven. He knew he was home again after yet another household move when he smelled the delicious beans bubbling away in the old cast iron pot.

“Sorry mom,” one of my sons replied to my food query. “What I remember best is Grandma’s pot roast in the pressure cooker, hissing and spitting steam. And of course, her string beans were delicious because I had helped to clean and snap them.”

You can’t win ‘em all!