Mamma's Home Cooking

Supervising the cook...

I got a note from my sister this morning.  It reminds me of why cardamom sends me into bliss.  Not to disagree with the older sister, but I do remember one occasion when my sister must have been out that day, and my mother actually made the cardamom coffee cake herself!  My younger siblings and I all stood at her hip, peering up at her busy hands and the bowl of batter.  We couldn’t have been more astonished if she’d sprouted wings, and flown us up to heaven. 

On another note, the Mae my sister mentions was our beloved aunt, who wore REAL Chanel suits and hitchhiked to work from her apartment tower near English Bay into downtown Vancouver, all in the 60’s.  I think we had the influence of some wild women.

Here’s the note:

(She couldn’t find the link for the website on my Facebook “fan” page)

“…So I decided to google the site listed.  And up popped - is that your site - the site with all those really interesting and delicious sounding recipes.  Is that your very own site?  It is huge fun.  Also the recipes look wonderful.

The HUGE irony in the title is that, as you know, I used to do all the cooking from the time I was about 12, and much of the time when it was something good, our mother would pass it off as "Mom's home cooking".

I distinctly remember one time she had watched a cooking show and written everything down and as soon as I came home from school, there was my task, and she stood and supervised, and gave exact explicit step by step instructions for a sour cream cardamom coffee cake, with layers of cake batter interspersed with a crunchy brown sugar butter cardamom mixture.    Remembering that this was the FIFTIES.  No one had ever heard of cardamom. Maybe it was the early 60's, but CARDAMOM?

There were the days when cooking with tins of mushroom soup (to this day I cannot even stand the smell of the stuff)  was the most advanced and exotic fancy cooking ever.  Somehow, in snow covered Calgary, our mother managed to track down and purchase cardamom.  She who never had so much as a cup of coffee unless it was served to her.

The coffee cake was absoloodle fabulous.  I started being encouraged to make industrial quantities of the stuff.  I remember a whole cake of it going over to the Prieurs.

 I remember that is was our father who actually taught me, well I learned by watching, how to cook.  And how to make a god awful mess in the kitchen.  But when our mother wanted something nice, she stood there and gave v good step by step instructions.

 Maybe with this blog you will become famous and there will be a book and a movie as in Julie and Julia.  As with Meryl Streep channeling Julia Child,  so someone will have to be selected to channel you.

Although the Julie character really got up my nose.  She was soooo self absorbed.  I wanted to  slap her, and then felt I was really uncharitable until I read that her second book was all about the affair she had after the J&J book came out. smack.  smack.

I screeched when I saw the clip of the fashion oldies.  A same age retired teacher friend who is really into jewelry sent it to me, and I though it was so good that I had to share it.

 It was Mae who was my life style mentor - , killer wardrobe, apartment in downtown Vancouver, lots of socializing with friends and tons of gay men friends.   Lucky me.

 Mae did cook with mushroom soup sometimes though.  It was the v latest thing in those days.gag..

 Michael and I are about to watch Downton Abbey on PBS.  We are completely hooked.

J”