The Things We Share

Mark came up for a long visit (10 days!) over Christmas break. What else was I to do other than bake some cookies to prepare for his arrival? I had time a plenty, so I couldn't resist arranging all of the ingredients as nicely as I could on the cutting board and took pictures. There will come a time, if we ever decide to have children, when it won't be practical or fun to spend ten extra minutes futzing with pictures of food. Of course, then I'll probably be trying to quickly snap some pictures of a little one, who will hopefully be standing on a chair and adding suspect amounts of vanilla extract to cookie dough.

I like putting together all of my ingredients before I start cooking. When I'm not planning on taking any pictures, I never lay them out like this. That would be silly.

Cookies, in progress

I imagine that happening because Mark and I want to share our love for cooking with other people. Honestly, my ideal dinner party would involve everyone coming over, drinking some wine, and making food with us. To save my friends from dirtying their hands or feeling like they are doing work at a party, Mark and I share our love for cooking with each other and on the blog. Over our time together Mark has become really comfortable in the kitchen. At this point, there are definitely a few things that he makes better than I can.

Mark made banana pancakes for Christmas!

Cinnamon rolls--all Mark's handiwork

Reading The Bread Bible

Now, tomorrow is my mom's birthday, which got me thinking about what she shared with me. Not everyone enjoys cooking, and I can't explain why I do. In fact (and I hope that she doesn't mind me writing this), my mom finds very little enjoyment in cooking. It might be because it felt like a job for her. Cooking for four could not have been easy. Heck, I like cooking, and it can still be exhausting to plan meals for the week, prep ingredients, cook, and clean.

One thing that she shared with me is her love of music. Many of my childhood memories with her involve listening to Luis Miguel, Mariah Carey, Madonna, and disco CDs. Music was always on, and we were always singing and dancing. Even cleaning was tolerable with mom and her music. She would hand me a cleaning towel, a bottle of 409, and a feather duster. My job would be to clean all of the doorknobs and dust things as well as any five-year-old kid could. She would vacuum and do all of the heavy cleaning. All the while, we'd be singing at the top of our lungs. When she would mishear a lyric, we would laugh until our tummies hurt, and the song lyrics would be forever changed to whatever mom had heard.



My mom may not love cooking, but there are some things she made that stood out to me. She would take a piece of beef, pound it out until it was really thin, dip it in egg, cover it in bread crumbs and some spices, and pan fry it to make milanesa. Just like we did with carrots, cucumbers, catfish, french fries, and potato chips, we would squeeze an entire lime over it. Also (and I'm not sure if this is a Mexican dish or what), she would make something that we called ham salad. It is not traditional ham salad. She would cook peas, carrots, and potatoes, toss them with some mayo, and wrap the mixture up in a slice of ham. It sounds weird and certainly earned me a lot of strange looks at the cafeteria table, but it's yummy.

I call it Christmas salad now, mostly because I make it in the winter and there's less chance of people thinking that I love traditional ham salad (yuck!). Mark likes it.

My mom shares more with me than music and covering everything in lime juice. She reminds me to put aside my worries. Any spontaneity I have likely comes from her. My love affair with bread? Definitely her. She has always been supportive. She will talk with me for hours about anything. This is, clearly, not a comprehensive list. Angie and I are lucky to have her.

Happy {almost} birthday, mom!