Feb 28 2011
My, how time flies when I’m having fun. Broken bones take so long to heal, especially in older folks. I feel for my poor Mom. With her right ‘wing’ clipped, she is like a fish out of water. She has had to relearn to feed herself with her left hand and it been giving her some severe headaches. Life is hard to deal with when you have a limb immobilized to your side.
We have laughed about the ‘alien’ hand that appears to be growing out of her stomach. My sister’s young daughter is 6 and she finally asked if Grandmommies arm had broken off and was that why she couldn’t see it sticking out of the sleeves of Moms oversized shirts. We finally let her see that Grandmommie still had an arm under there. She thought when you had a broken arm it was like when you break a dolls arm; it breaks off. We quickly reassured her that was not the case.
It has been like the Pillsbury Cook Off between my sister and I as we make sure that Mom has nourishing meals. We both plan what we are going to cook and I’ve got to tell you, Mom is eating pretty ‘high on the hog’ these days. Sis and I have a tendency to be adventurous in our cooking and we both have pretty impressive culinary skills. We both can do ‘country’ cooking but we also create our own dishes and branch out into dishes from other cultures. Mom never knows what she going to be served but she hasn’t turned anything down yet.
I’ve been inspired to make sure she has good things for breakfast. I have made kolaches filled with pear and peach preserves and my Cape Cod Breakfast Cake and the old stand by of fluffy cat head biscuits topped with sausage gravy. I’ve even started taking photos of my meal preps each step of the way and sharing them on Facebook.
My cooking also spills over into my work with the youth at our church. Last Wednesday I was busy finishing a watercolor architectural rendering and I realized I had not even thought about what I was going to prepare for the kids at church that night. I quickly roundly up my waffle iron and pancake griddle and all the things I needed to make some yummy pancakes and headed to the church kitchen.
I made 20 Belgium waffles and about 50 pancakes and had then ready when the kids started arriving. Everyone loved pancakes but they had never seen all the toppings I had available. I showed then how I like my pancakes; 3 arranged like a 3 leaf clover on the plate and in the center of that was strawberries and bananas drizzled with strawberry syrup; Then a big squirt of whipped cream and a sprinkling of tiny chocolate chips finished it. The kids all looked at that plate and quickly said that was exactly what they wanted.
One child, the tiniest little guy you have ever seen, polished off 7 pancakes AND a waffle.
He tried then with blueberries and strawberries and bananas and with chocolate syrup and maple syrup. He was like me, he just likes pancakes. I didn’t have any left over pancakes from that meal.
I know I will be cooking for my young ones at church for a long time. I think their tummies need filling before we start feeding them spiritually. And it looks like I will be cooking for my mom for a while longer too.
We were talking about her great meals and I asked her what she was going to do when she recovered and could use her arm again. She just smiled and said that she would be visiting my sister and me on a regular basis and mostly around meal time. Hey, I’m not complaining. Meal time should be family time any way.
I’m just going back to the Beatitudes and there is not going to be any poor in spirit or hungering while I’m able to do something about it!
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