Apron Strings

Okay, at our house the run­ning joke was… is it pot roast or roast pot? In the “olden days” prairie Moms would sum­mon their fam­i­lies, work­ing hard in the fields and barns, to the table using a sus­pended iron tri­an­gle which would be heard by every­one. At my house, it was the smoke alarm. The moment it went off, we opened win­dows and doors and fran­ti­cally waved a tea towel near the alarm until it stopped its ear-piercing tone. Yes, this was the indi­ca­tion that Mom was ready to serve din­ner. Whether we liked it or not, we were eating.

My Mom didn’t really like to cook at all, and with English and Irish blood, prac­ti­cally every­thing she made was boiled.… most times until there was no liq­uid left, only smoke (see above din­ner sum­mons). She grew up in rural Quebec, on a dairy farm. I won­der about what great cream sauces they could have enjoyed, or cheeses or other inter­est­ing meals… but her cook­ing cre­ativ­ity was some­how stunted and per­haps scarred to the point that she only cooked because it was required of her. Even though she owned a copy of The Joy of Cooking, rarely did we see “joy” in the food.

Our fam­ily moved to P.E.I., when I was five. I remem­ber eat­ing din­ner at friends’ houses and enjoy­ing fresh veg­eta­bles or frozen veg­gies and fresh pota­toes. Contrast this with my house where every veg­etable came out of a can. We lived in P.E.I. and my Mom actu­ally bought CANNED POTATOES… the gro­cery clerks prob­a­bly laughed their hineys off the moment she walked out with those dusty cans. I remem­ber every gray meal… gray veg­gies, gray meat, gray gravy.

God love her, she tried. Even though she con­stantly failed, she kept at it. We never went hun­gry… we weren’t allowed to leave food on the plate. None of us kids offered to cook; we’d have prob­a­bly arrived at the same result, with such a mentor.

I remem­ber telling her about din­ner at a friend’s place. It was my first expo­sure to the colour­ful world of frozen veg­gies. I remem­ber being awak­ened to tex­ture and flavour. Realizing that there was some “other” way to do veg­eta­bles that some­how gave them flavour , I went home and sim­ply asked why we didn’t use frozen veg­eta­bles. Immediately she responded with “freez­ing takes away all the good­ness and makes it rub­bery”. That was that… there was to be no fur­ther dis­cus­sion about using frozen or fresh veg­eta­bles. It was going to be mushy veg­eta­bles in her home because they were full of good­ness. Ugh!

In my adult­hood, I’ve taken culi­nary courses, mar­ried a guy who is an amaz­ing cook and whose Mother was an aston­ish­ing cook, baker, and pre­server. I remem­ber the first meal that my hus­band acci­den­tally burned… he was com­pletely deflated… to me, this was famil­iar “home cookin’ ” and none went to waste. That hav­ing been said, I have a pas­sion for food and have an adven­tur­ous palate. I’m eat­ing well, and it shows.

My mother is gone now… been gone for years. I miss her dearly.… not for her cook­ing but for every­thing else, includ­ing her perseverance.