When I think of Mother’s Day, I think about preparing the family meal. My mother, in her suburban Milwaukee kitchen, started to prepare for dinner directly after the family had left the house after breakfast. An old gray recipe box opened next to the stove, with each recipe notated in her perfect script.
The notes were always great fun to read. “Made strata for Tracy’s birthday breakfast … Danny liked the Chinese Chicken … Served Jano’s Chicken salad on Pepperidge Farm white toast.”
My dad never cooked. He was capable of putting his large pottery mug in the microwave with a teaspoon of Folger’s instant coffee. “Ta-da!” he would exclaim. “Perfect coffee every time!”
Once they retired and moved from Milwaukee to Phoenix, Dad graduated from making instant coffee to preparing a once-a-month barbeque of Sheboygan Bratwurst and Bush’s Boston Baked Beans, but for the most part, Mom did all the cooking — breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I suppose, as a teenager, I viewed her life as dull, boring and unfulfilling. But looking back on it, I now realize her dinner meals were perfect every time, with just the correct amount of protein, starch, vegetables and dessert.
She also prided herself in preparing lavish dinner parties for my dad’s clients and artist friends. She started expanding her Midwestern repertoire by taking a French cooking class, and her signature dish for the company became boeuf en daube, so named for the luxurious French beef stew served with homemade French bread and expensive red wine.
WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM OUR MOTHERS?
Although I respected my mother’s domestic talents, when I left for college, I was determined not to be a “housewife.” I went on to study art education at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and later moved with my former husband to Cold Spring, New York.
After teaching art for many years, I oddly followed in my mother’s footsteps, opening a small storefront catering business in the small ex-urban town where we lived in the 1980s.
Although I had no professional catering experience, I traveled to the New York City and Westchester suburbs for ethnic cooking ideas and cooked my way through 10 international cookbooks. My business, Jano Catering, lasted for about three years but taught me a lot about being an entrepreneur and cooking on a large scale.
LEARNING FROM THE PROFESSIONIALS
As I write my Mother’s Day article, I have turned to one of my favorite food writers, Ruth Reichl, for ideas. When I lived in New York, I read Ruth’s restaurant reviews in the New York Times and her writing in Gourmet Magazine religiously.
When Gourmet ceased publication, Ruth was left without a job, and spent a year cooking in her home kitchen. In her memoir, “My Kitchen Year, 136 Recipes That Saved My Life,” she fondly remembers, “I still believe, to the core of my being, that when you pay attention, cooking becomes a kind of meditation. And so, I take my time, admiring the hidden color until you peel a peach. I open the oven door, leaning to savor the fine yeasty scent of the bread as it begins its slow rise.
“The physical act of cooking gives me enormous pleasure, but I also like watching what it does for others. Even the angriest person is soothed by the scent of soup simmering on the stove. The formula is simple: When you cook for people, they feel cared for.”
Ruth also combined her cooking and recipe writing with treks outdoors into her garden on her Hudson River property. In strawberry season, she wrote, “Strawberry morning. Sunshine and butterflies. Clean air. Flour, butter, cream: the scent of a very fine future. Everything seems possible.”
She talks about her strawberry shortcake, which reminded me of my grandmother’s strawberry shortcake recipe.
RECIPES FROM THE PAST
My paternal grandmother, Grama VanDenBerg, became a widow at the age of 50 and went to work as a cook at a local VFW hall. I admired her cooking skills, developed from necessity, and relished spending time in her tiny home kitchen.
She had a springtime ritual of picking strawberries from her Milwaukee bungalow backyard. The family gathered around her backyard picnic table to taste the season’s delight of strawberry shortcake.
Here is her recipe, taken from the “Betty Crocker Cookbook.”
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
Ingredients (recipe can be doubled)
- 4 cups strawberries
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 1/3 cups Bisquick Baking Mix
- 2/3 cup milk
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream
Directions
- Heat oven to 425°F. In large bowl, mix strawberries and ¼ cup sugar; set aside.
- In medium bowl, stir Bisquick mix, milk, 3 tablespoons sugar and the butter until soft dough forms. On ungreased cookie sheet, drop dough with a spoon to form six biscuits.
- Bake 16-17 minutes or until golden brown. Meanwhile, in small bowl, beat whipping cream with electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form.
- Split warm shortcakes; fill and top with strawberries and whipped cream.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST
As we celebrate Mother’s Day, maybe it is time to explore the archival recipe books that our mothers and grandmothers kept. Is there an old gray recipe box on a kitchen bookshelf somewhere?
With the current interest in the local food scene in food preservation, fermentation and organic cooking, maybe we can learn from the past.
Send me your recipe ideas, and we can continue our conversation!
Jano Nightingale is a horticulturist and Master Gardener and teaches vegetable gardening at the Carlsbad Senior Garden. Contact her at [email protected] for upcoming classes, or call the Carlsbad Senior Center at (442) 339-2650.
