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. Nothing about these beautiful specimens was palatable, so we immediately spit out the bites we had taken and even wiped our tongues to remove any traces of the dreadful things. When our mother awoke, we asked her about the muffins and whether she was trying to poison us, and she laughed as she explained that she may have forgotten to add sugar and might have added measures of salt instead. Yum.
This is not to say that my mother’s cooking is a total loss. She makes a pretty good Thanksgiving turkey, spoons the cranberry sauce from the can carefully enough to keep the lovely ribbing in tact, browns the marshmallows and the yams perfectly, and the follows the green bean casserole recipe to the letter. In fact, this is the meal she makes for every holiday because she does it so well.
But the best part of the meal is the chopped liver appetizer she makes from the turkey liver. Into the solid wood chopping bowl she got from the hardware store when I was a toddler, she chops up the liver, hard boiled eggs, and burnt onions and adds a little mayo instead of schmaltz. Yet this is truly the best chopped liver I have ever had. Unlike much chopped liver, which is usually as dense as caulk, this chopped liver is salty, flavorful but not too rich, moist, and loosely constructed. It may be a mistake, but to me it’s perfect.
Pamela Felcher is the English Department Chair at Hamilton High School's Music and Arts Magnet.