Pepper Nuts
Last year I was riffling through my cupboards looking for my mom’s pepper nut cookie recipe. You know the ones … you make a month before the holidays and glaze (no one could glaze like my mom) so they look like translucent snow on a very cold moonlit night. Hmmm. Not here. Not a problem. I will call mom. I reached for my phone and then … paused. Certainly could not call mom, she has been gone for many years now. Next best thing, I called my sisters and asked them to send me the family recipe.
Potato Donuts & Fried Zucchini Blossoms
On special occasions my mom would take her electric skillet outside and cook up her mom’s potato donuts. Fresh out of the hot oil with a little glaze or plain – we were the happiest kids around. If friends stopped in my mom was even more delighted to share. Other hot summer days we ate fried zucchini blossoms (picked in the early morning) and fried puffed up zucchini slices. Parmesan, oregano and love – the best flavors ever.
Mason Jars
One early spring I helped my mom unload fruit baskets of mason jars that she had stored in the garage cupboards over the winter. She used these jars to warm up the soil and air around her vegetable seedlings in the garden. Every big jar had a smaller jar inside it. I thought (for many years and always in wonder) that the baby jar had grown inside the big jar over the winter. How magical! My mom never told me otherwise … thank you.
Books
Our most loved shared passion was books. Both my mom and I read every book (in order) we could find by Anthony Trollop (over 40 writings including the Barsetshire and Pallister series). We both soaked up Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade after I found the book at the library with the pages still uncut! No one had read this book. And my mom was there for me when I fell in love with Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White and Moonstone). Nothing brought us closer than sharing and loving the same book.
Library and Bookmobile
As children my mom read to us every chance she had – it amazes me still that she found the time. We had the whole set of 1949 ChildCraft books. The first volumes showed the wear appropriate to toddlers – spilled juice, crayon scribblings and a few torn pages. The later volumes more fitting for a preteen were nearly pristine. When we could read on our own we always had stacks of books from the library or bookmobile.
Collies and Fireflies
As kids, many a warm summer night we slept outside under an army tarp draped over the clothesline. With our collies guarding us, our parents close by to protect us (from the darkness maybe), the fireflies enchanting us, and a flashlight in hand, we each read our favorite book. The library must have had a lot of damp (not to mention dog smelling) books returned to them for many summers.
What is your mom moment?
Delightfully yours,
