5 thoughts on “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION – MOTHER(-IN-LAW)’S COOKING”

  1. That was fun! 👩🏻‍🍳

    Her Codex

    Truly, I’d say eat whatever she cooks
    because one day she’ll be gone.
    She and her recipes, written down
    in disintegrating leather-bound books,
    pages held in-situ with rubber bands,
    recipes written in foreign words and
    in quick short back-slanting strokes,

    in measurements that require
    her grandmother’s chipped teacup,
    and a another measurement often
    referred to as a scant knife edge,
    and to knead dough until springy
    means to do so with fused-arthritic
    fingers poised like a panther.

    She’s gone now, gone with her
    recipes that she kept in her head,
    secret ingredients coded, omitted,
    that scant knife edge hid out of sight.
    But I have her pots, I have her pans,
    her favourite wooden spoon, and
    great-grandmother’s chipped teacup.

    And I have her leather-bound book.
    But not those secret ingredients.

  2. I could not tell you
    for I have never eaten
    mother-in-law food

    I tell you no lie
    I’m not sure she even cooks
    that’s okay with me

  3. Kept Cooking Into Her 80’s

    – My mom could tender a brisket every time. My sister
    and I have given up.

    – If you like your stuffed cabbage sweet and sour, Mom’s tang
    rang out.

    – Crispy fried chicken? She learned from a southerner
    while Dad was stationed in Ft. Jackson.

    – Remember homemade french fries? Yup, she made them from
    scratch.

    – Love turkey with stuffing? You would moan in delight
    over Mom’s two specialties–chestnut and cornbread.

    – Mom taught us how to bake original Toll House chocolate chip
    cookies. We would try to eat them before they cooled.

    – Years ago, I loved her chopped liver, hand ground in an old
    steel grinder. Secret ingredient: seltzer.

    – Though Dad called it rabbit food, Mom’s salad ingredients
    differed. Sometimes you’d find chopped scallions, or
    radishes, or thin sliced red onion.

    – She would be so hurt if I didn’t.

  4. Pingback: Poetic Blooming: Her Codex – Plumb-Lines

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