Sunday Dinner at Mom and Dad's

I like to credit my mother for instilling in me my passion for cooking. I have always marveled at her creations, paying intense attention to her techniques and trying to immitate the same at home. But, as many people also find, things always, no matter what, taste better when they're made by Mom.



This is my Mom when she was around my age. The resemblance is uncanny, I know. My Mom's interest in cooking started when she was in her late teens, early on in her college years. She has a very vivid memory of being about 18 or 19 and watching her Aunt Nadine cook spaghetti sauce, and asked for the recipe after the meal. This recipe eventually became one of Mom's staple recipes during the first few years of my parents' marriage. My dad's friend, Wolf, coined the term "Gray Spaghetti", due to the fact that the sauce contains a can of cream of mushroom soup, giving it somewhat of a grayish hue.

Over the course of the next several years, Mom slowly accumulated more recipes from various friends - a woman at work, who had learned to cook from the sharecroppers on her father's cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta, and the flamboyantly gay black man who frequented the flower shop where Mom and Dad worked, who gave her a delicious recipe for Italian Meatloaf, to name but a few. Here's a picture of Mom's first recipe, handwritten by Aunt Nadine herself.



Sunday night, Mom and Dad had Eric and me over for dinner. Since the temperature outside was breaking 100 degrees and my parents live in a historic home (read: no air conditioning), Mom thought it best that she grill something outside as opposed to even thinking of turning on the 1960's era, highly inefficient oven. When my parents bought their house in 1997, one of the things left behind by the previous occupants was a hibachi, a japanese barbeque grill. My parents have used this egg-shaped contraption quite often, and it always yields delicious results. This particular evening, Mom was grilling asian marinated chicken.



Meanwhile, I was inside helping prepare the salads. Mom had come across a recipe for an arugula and grapefruit salad with avacado, sliced grapes and toasted, seasoned pecans. The dressing was creamy and mild, a good accompaniment to the peppery arugula.



We sat down for dinner shortly after 7:00. The dinner table had been moved to the basement, the coolest area of the house. We listened to reggae on the radio and had at least five oscelating fans positioned around the room, cooling us as we ate our meal. Our chicken and salad were accompanied by some delicious roasted veggies (squash, red bell pepper and onion), and what meal would be complete without one of my Mom's now infamous deviled eggs? Shortly after this picture was taken, mom exclaimed, "Oh my GAWD, I forgot the capers!" Usually on Mom's deviled eggs, there are three capers placed vertically on the egg, making it look like a deviled egg wearing a button-up shirt.



The great food continued after dinner. Shortly after we cleared the table from dinner, we set it for dessert. Mom served up some homemade peach-strawberry ice cream and a "surprise dessert", which she wouldn't divulge to anyone until she took the foil off of the dish. The ice cream was a wonderful consistency, not bogged down with guar gum and other additives that make store bought ice cream its chewy, rubbery consistency; this was light, fluffy, creamy and highly meltable.



The surprise dessert turned out to be an eclaire cake, a delightful recipe from the one and only Paula Deen of The Lady and Sons restaurant in Savannah, Georgia (and also of Food Network fame). The cake was made of layers of graham crackers and coconut cream pudding, with a chocoate icing on top. Sinful. Decadent. And two pieces, please.



After it was all said and done, Eric and I went home stuffed full of the best food a body can be provided - food made by the loving hands of a mother. Thanks, Mom.