I think it was Joan Rivers who joked about an epitaph that would suit her: “I’d rather be here than in the kitchen!” Or was her line, “If God wanted women to cook, he would have given them aluminum hands?" Either way, my mother has lived by both of these lines her whole life, well at least for as long as I lived with her as a kid. So imagine my and my sisters’ surprise when one sunny Sunday morning, while in our early and mid-teens, we awoke to a basket of picture-perfect bran muffins. Astounding.
We wondered what had suddenly possessed this woman whose disdain for the kitchen was evinced, for example, by small hamburgers formed in the palm of her hand, slightly bulging in the center, tapered at the edges, and so over cooked that they would crumble into gray gri stly beef pebbles. My mom had a fondness for ketchup as the panacea for all cooking ills and one time, a favorite cousin of hers placed rolls of TUMS at every place setting before one of her holiday dinners. Her reputation preceded her.
My sister and I stared at the basket, at the plump brown muffins perched in a perfect cluster. “Should we?” we tittered. We each plucked one of the muffins from their nest and peeled off the paper wrappers. We did not want to spoil the moment, but we were dying for a taste. Tentatively, we put our lips to the muffin tops, then we took big bites. Mouths full, eyes wide, we stared at each other for a second. The shock was instant.
My mother happily referred to herself as a “good eater.” Although she was very petite, she could out-eat even our teenaged sons. Every year for Mother’s Day the Southern California branch of the family would drive to Little Saigon in Westminster and eat at Dong Khanh, where my mom ordered her favorites: lemon grass chicken, lobster in black pepper sauce, chow mein noodles with squid, vermicelli with bbq pork, spring rolls and a large bowl of pho ga — chicken vermicelli soup.
Since Mother's Day is a day when mom is celebrated and pampered, it would be counter-intuitive to expect her to cook. On the other hand, putting too much burden on the other members of the family (dad and the kids) would also be ill-advised.
Perhaps it's their association with English tea and ladies' garden luncheons that make scones so deliciously feminine. Since they're one of the easiest baked goods to make and are always well received, they're an ideal addition to your Mother's Day breakfast.
Around our house in those days, if you didn’t clean up your room you went to bed without dessert. Not just a mess in your own room, either. If you left a mess anywhere and refused to be responsible for it—reasons ranging from recalcitrance to outright sloth—no matter! There was NO EXCUSE FOR IT! You hit the sack with a hole in your belly. Tough patooties. That was the law of the land.