A friend sent me one of those ubiquitous emails, this about a woman who felt she was invisible as a mother and bemoaned the days when she had read books, studied, had a future other than laundry, cooking, chaffeuring, etc. Then a traveler returning from Europe gave her a book on cathedrals, inscribed something to the effect of "in honor of what you're silently building." It seems no one knows who built the great cathedrals--the workers who labored for years never got credit. The mother saw the analogy to her own situation and realized she was quietly building lives.
It resonated with me though not quite in the way intended. People often say to me, in somewhat awed tones of amazement, that they don't know how, as a single, working mother, I raised four children to be such really good people who live really good lives and are raising their own good people I'm stumped for an answer. I did what most mothers do, and in fact, I was often deficient. I sometimes think of things I didn't do or did do and shouldn't have, and I think they raised themselves in spite of me. Was I too strict? Not strict enough? Did I read to them enough? Did I monitor their homework? The only thing I can be sure of is I fed them regular good healthy meals. And yet they don't seem to see it that way. Megan once said something that indicated that even in tumultous times--and there were those!--they knew they had me. When I told her how much that moved me, she said, "Oh, Mom, we've all talked about it." Makes me humble and grateful for my wonderful family.
Today I'm cooking for company. I was going to cook what I call the $8,000 leg of lamb. I once fixed it for my friend Sheila, who emailed the next day to say she'd pay me $8,000 for the recipe. What makes it good is that you make a gratin of sliced potatoes, onions and tomatoes. Then put a cake rack over that, and the lamb on the rack, so that it's juices drip down into the vegetables. It was pretty wonderful, but one of my guests tonight doesn't eat lamb. So I'm doing a good but plebian meatloaf and experimenting on an Italian vegetable dish, plus a Toll House pie that is sinfully good. But this morning, making the meatloaf mixture (which has everything but the kitchen sink in it), I watched "Simply Ming," one of my favorite cooking shows on PBS. Ming was cooking steak and potatoes with a side dish of haricots vert with lemon butter and scallions or some such. But he said he hates to let a steak rest on a cutting board because all the juices go into the board, so he rests it on the potatoes. He took what looked like quartered, boiled regular Idaho potatoes, sort of mushed them a little, and set the steak on top. Great idea! For the next dish, he heated a skillet to very hot and sauteed cubed zucchini, scallops, and chopped scallions. I missed what he added for seasoning, beyond salt and pepper, but I bet soy sauce would be good. He served it with rice, but I'm not much of a rice person. I'd eat it plain.
I'm reading a book called A Charmed Life: Growing Up in MacBeth's Castle--it's both dark and funny, though one guesses that the Scots can be pretty dark sometimes. It's part, though, of my stocking up on Scotland. We plan to visit Cawdor Castle, known as MacBeth's Castle because of Shakepseare rather than history, I gather. Than I'm going on to investigate how to publish my languishing novel on Kindle.
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