My Mama's Cooking

So who taught you to cook? Your mother, your grandmother, a sister or a friend? Or perhaps you took cooking lessons; maybe you don't know how to cook. "Ridiculous", my Mama would say, "if you can read, you can cook." So listen to my Mama through me and we will cook together, explore some recipes from the past and some new ones I have added to my own collection of easy cooking.

My first experience with cooking was in my Mama's kitchen,where she showed me how to make scrambled eggs at the age of four. I have been making eggs the same way since. I learned to cook by watching my Mama chop, saute and assemble until the aroma filled the kitchen making my mouth water.I loved food as a child and would always ask for seconds or beg for the leftover mashed potatoes from my skinny sister's plate.( I guess that would explain my life long battle with weight.)

Mama prepared the evening meal in our tiny kitchen with flowered wallpaper, she always wore an apron tied at her waist and had a pot of boiling water simmering on the stove. When I was older and asked Mama why she always boiled water every night, she told me a secret passed down from her mother." A pot of boiling water always appears as if supper is in the works," she said. Little did my father know that Mama was still thinking about what she was going to throw together for the evening meal. This little secret passed down from my grandmother, to mother, to me, bailed me out quite a few times when I too, had no clue as to what I was going to make for dinner.

But my love for cooking is a tribute to my Mama who passed away when I was in my early thirties from breast cancer. I wanted to know everything about her recipes and many nights when sitting by her bedside in the final stages of her disease, I would pull out her recipe box and hand written cookbook and ask her questions. Where did the recipe come from? How do I get the yeast to rise? What about the German dishes, where did they come from? Talking with my mother about cooking was a way in which I could somehow get through those hours of emotional pain. "Why all these questions about food?" she asked, somewhat annoyed with me."Do you think I am going somewhere?" These are Mama's recipes and a tribute to her and her love for her family through food.