Apron Strings

Lovingly Submitted by Lori Myers

(a.k.a.: My mom is an amaz­ing cook … NOW!)

Once, long ago, before my mom actu­ally became a fab­u­lous cook, she cre­ated a truly awful meal. My apolo­gies to her. It might have been my fault!

She was at wits’ end. My brother and I were the choosiest, most finicky eaters on the planet and our head chef was sick of KD and hot dogs. I don’t blame her.

Before pro­ceed­ing fur­ther, I admit here that our demand­ing (and refus­ing) tastes were prob­a­bly what led to the frus­tra­tion pro­vok­ing the din­ner menu in ques­tion. Our ter­ri­ble eat­ing habits were also why, until then, not many adven­tur­ous culi­nary attempts were made in our house. Mom knew no one would eat them.

One day I returned home after an ener­getic post-school romp in the ravine. Hmmmmm. What was that strange aroma waft­ing from the cheer­ful kitchen?

Sorry Mom, the nose knows. This nose in particular.

“Do I smell … LIVER????!!!” I asked, com­pletely appalled, and ready for a fight.

“Of course not!” replied the quick-thinking bud­ding chef.

You know the old adage: when in doubt, lie. Sometimes it works. (Not on me, mind you, but I always do admire a sin­cere attempt!)

“I smell liver!” I screamed. There was an echo in there. And I was ready to run away from home. (Or at least go else­where for din­ner.) (Someone, some­where was mak­ing KD.)

“Don’t be silly!” Mom attempted to calm me down.

Yep, that had always worked in the past. Not.

The dish in ques­tion was a fright­en­ingly unsub­tle attempt to con­ceal a bit of pro­tein. The offend­ing sub­stance was actu­ally ground, sautéed chicken liv­ers, in spaghetti sauce (which I already dis­liked, as it con­tained bits of unknown “ingre­di­ents”) (duh!!).

Okay, chicken liver spaghetti. Sure, that sounds like some­thing picky kids would l-o-v-e. Parents, seri­ously: where do you get these ideas?

The rest of the evening passed unevent­fully. That is: no one ate much. Not even the opti­mistic cook. We were mad, the house stank (sorry, Mom), din­ner was truly awful. Mind you, no one left the province.

Liver was never attempted again. Cooking soon became much more excit­ing and adven­tur­ous as the whole fam­ily cul­ti­vated a sin­cere and last­ing inter­est in var­ied ingre­di­ents, and meals other than mac­a­roni. Food became an excuse for explo­ration and fun and shared research … of the eat­ing vari­ety. There were plenty of great meals from then on. And there still are!

This tale about attempt­ing to inflict some vari­ety still comes up often at fam­ily din­ners, because that hor­ri­ble din­ner led to lots of won­der­ful cook­ing. And because I can be a bit of a pest with a bad story. And also because some­how there is noth­ing quite so much fun as a lov­ing fam­ily joke.

The lit­tle exper­i­ment didn’t work Mom, but you more than made up for it!