Sun 3 May 2009 10:03 pm
My mom took the train up from Delaware to be with me at the James Beard Foundation media awards in New York City tonight. The theme for this year’s Oscars of the culinary world was “Women In Food,” and, for most of us, our mothers are the ones who shape so much of how we think about cooking and eating.
So, I’m making that the theme of a ticket giveaway to a James Beard dinner coming to Seattle on May 14. It’s a “Celebrity Chef Tour” meant to recreate a bit of the experience of dining at the James Beard House, “featuring the greatest culinary artists in major markets across the United States.” Ethan Stowell will cook at the $175-a-plate fundraiser at at the Columbia Tower Club along with the club’s James Hassell, with organizers promising ”an innovative, one-of-a-kind dinner” and wine pairings.
Want to win? Just leave a comment on this post telling us how your own mother influenced the way you eat and cook. I’ll pick two names, using a random number generator, at midnight Seattle time on Friday, May 8, and give each qualifying winner (that is, someone who answered the question, however briefly) a pair of tickets, courtesy of the event organizers. One comment per person, please — but you can always ask the person who would accompany you to leave a comment of his or her own.
Stowell’s many honors include being a repeat finalist in the Beard’s Best Chefs Northwest category — other Northwest chef finalists, with winners to be determined Monday night at Lincoln Center, are Maria Hines, Joseba Jimenez de Jimenez, Cathy Whims (of Portland) and Jason Wilson, with Tom Douglas up for outstanding restaurateur.
Stowell’s plans for the May 14 dinner include serving up geoduck, hamachi crudo (the man knows his way around crudo), ocean trout, and a creme fraiche panna cotta with rhubarb. He’ll trade off courses with Hassell, who will cook up a storm as well. It’s the second time Stowell’s been a celebrity chef for the event, and remembers the first one as exciting and as “a lot of fun” — and he means that. “I like going out and meeting people,” he said, and he likes supporting a good cause.
Tonight, I was honored at the Beards just to be noted in the same category as David Leite and Kathleen Purvis, let alone to win the award. I think I managed to squeak that out from the stage, and to thank all my colleagues from the dearly departed Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, where the story ran, because it was a team effort, and we were a good team. (Meryl Schenker and John Levesque, are you listening?) And I’m so thankful that, despite all the other deserving people I forgot in that lovely overwhelming moment, I did manage to thank my mother. What she taught me, intentionally or not, was to make good food a natural priority in life, a way to join family and friends together.
Thank you, all of you, for joining me here in that ongoing mission. And tell me: How did your mother influence the way you think about food?
*updated 5/9 to announce our winners: The random number generator at random.org has selected Nancy White (comment left at 1:30 p.m. May 8) and Donna (comment left at 10:06 May 5) as the two winners. Each one will receive a pair of tickets to the event, courtesy of the organizers. Thank you, all of you, for the wonderful posts! This was a great response, and we’ll do more contests in the future.
Congratulations, Rebekah!!
My love for desserts goes all the way back to my preschool days “helping” Mom bake. As I got older, I eventually took over the Christmas Cookie Project as well as routine baking. All because I wanted first dibs on the cookies.
Congrats on the Beard award! Almost every day as I prepare dinner I think of my mom’s and grandmothers’ kitchens, and I am thankful for the memories and my culinary heritage (Pennsylvania Dutch and Ukrainian).
My Grandmother ran our household kitchen, she taught me family was not company but she cooked each meal as if we were.
Baking! I’ll be forever grateful to my mom for teaching me how to bake. She did leave me hanging when it comes to cooking, but I’d trade that for her biscotti and pie recipes.
Although going to the grocery store with two young children must have been challenging, my mom always took us with her - it was down the isles and in the meat and produce departments that we learned how to be savvy shoppers and creative cooks, lessons I appreciate every day as an adult.
Rebekah, you are so humble and lovely. You saved the announcement that YOU WON! until after the click.
Clearly, your mom did a wonderful job of raising you.
My mother was strictly a salt and pepper cook during the depression era. However, she made my brother and me love lamb stew and fried oysters, with a seasoned flour and cracker crumb dip around mixed up eggs. Since then I look for lamb and oysters on any menu, especially lamb shank and fried oysters. My ideal entree is fried oysters at Anthony’s Home Port preceded by half a dozen raw ones as a starter.
My mother was a Chinese immigrant who came over in her mid-20’s. I was 6 years old before my sister and I convinced her to cook a Thanksgiving turkey. She had never cooked such a large bird - and had rarely tasted one. So she smothered it in hoisin sauce and tossed it in the oven. It was outstanding. She taught me to embrace new foods, voraciously learn new techniques, and, if all else fails, you can always stir fry it in garlic or smother it in hoisin sauce.
My mom can be summed up: “Would you like copious amounts of vegetables with that?”
Maybe not then, but definitely now, I always eat my vegetables ;)
How could I live in my Mom’s house for 18 years without being influenced by her cooking which I experienced as healthful, delicious and beautiful.
“Folding” egg whites into a batter…whether it’s into a waffle recipe or quiche…when I began, I wanted to just stir it all together; Mom showed me that sometimes it’s better to “fold” the 2nd mixture into the first.
My mother cooked for us every single day (lunch and dinner)- while working a full time job. And she managed to feed us on the tiniest of budgets. Her food may not have always been the most exotic, but she can throw down a mean pan of enchiladas and a lovely cioppino.
Her baking, however, was-and still is, fantastic. We had rows of red, white and blue ribbons on the fridge from the county fair for her different cakes and yeast breads. She makes 30-40 dozen of the most amazing cinnamon rolls every year as gifts for Christmas (I get mine fed-exed) by hand in giant rubbermaid tubs on the kitchen floor. She’s a total badass. I wish I could bake like her.
To my mom it’s all nothing special- just who she is. But this has all made me exactly who I am today.
My mother’s influence was a little indirect. Although I loved the shrimp rice with lemon and butter growing up, her cooking wasn’t the impetus for my late bloom food awakening. However, she did teach me to enjoy the life and especially the finer things which directly led to my appreciation of fine dining, travel and new experiences. Now I just need to get her to try pork belly…
Mom didn’t do the cooking in our household; my grandmother did. But before I left for college Mom sat me down and gave me advice on quick-and-dirty cooking-on-the-cheap. Her ideas helped me survive my hungry college years, and have served me in good stead ever since.
Congrats Rebecca. We’ve missed your column since the PI disappeared so we’re glad to find your website.
My Mom hated cooking and still does. I grew up in the 50’s/60’s so vegetables and soups came from cans, frozen pizza was considered a treat, and baked goods came out of boxes. Her signature dish was leftovers mixed up which she’d call “a la Vera”. She did have a few dishes her mother taught her: brisket and noodle kugel to name a few.
From this home has sprung three children all of whom love to cook! We have a large vegetable garden, bake bread/pies/cakes from scratch, basically never buy prepared foods and rarely get take out. Our kids see us making everything from scratch. Who knows if they’ll adopt our lifestyle or become the “box gourmet”.
Growing up in the 50’s, food at mom’s table was not complicated with 4 children, but there was always a fresh salad with homemade dressing. However, there were avocados, fresh fruit and marinated artichoke hearts eaten over the sink and wonderful salami. Nauna, my Italian grandma put in my sense brain the love of braised Italian foods, fresh home grown tomatoes and wonderful sweets with secret ingredients.
My mother, made me eat everything growing up. Today, it’s rare that I find a food I don’t like. Because I’ve been exposed to so many things, and she always cooked full dinners on her own at home, I find it difficult to go to a restaurant serving meals that I’m able to make on my own. I’m always looking for the best quality ingredients, and refuse to just randomly grab produce in fear of taking a bad apple. You realize how wonderful your mother’s cooking is, when you start eating other people’s food.
My Dad. He was the first person to teach me how good raw oysters taste by whipping out a shucking knife on a beach trip.
My mom was a home-ec teacher and had the philosophy that wanting to eat and wear clean clothing required learning to cook, wash dishes and clothes and iron. I have since learned that I don’t much care about pressed clothing but still really like eating. Especially homemade jams like my mother and grandmother make from picked berries.
I grew up in a working class town, raised by a mom who learned cooking from a southern-born mother (meaning everything was overcooked). But she didn’t stop at what she’d known growing up. When I was in 6th grade, she and my dad took a trip to Europe. When she came back, she subscribed to Bon Appetit, and all sorts of strange and wonderful things started showing up on our table. They weren’t always pretty (the curdled sole newburg which my father loyally ate), but they were adventurous and mostly fun. She and my dad ended up starting a dinner group, featuring the cuisine of a different foreign land for each meal, which she continues to this day, 20+ years later. She was deeply influential on my willingness to try cooking something new, just to see how it turned out.
My sense of self and belonging were nurtured and strengthened in the kitchen with my mother. To this day I braise in the same large copper pot she did, use the same old porcelain bowl to make thick lemony hollandaise, the same measuring cup to measure, and the same cookbooks she passed on to me.
Although my mother did not influence my cooking, my grandmother, who raised me, did. Nothing can prepare you for the delicious sweetness of food from your own garden unless you’ve harvested it and then had to buy it in a store later in life. My grandmother, who barely finished, grade 4, can cook Taiwanese, Japanese, classic Chinese, and American dishes in a blink of eye- and her food subtle and delicious. I learned that simple food is the best food
I didn’t think of my childhood as being all that food-enriching until some years ago I got a gift recipe box from my mother containing many of her simple but tasty recipes–it pleased me to no end then and still is well-used and a source of comfort food.
Congrats again, Rebekah.
I’m surprised at how many of those who have commented had moms who didn’t like to cook. I too am in that camp. We grew up on frozen steakettes, fish sticks, instant mashed potatoes — you get the picture. My mom thought convenience foods were fantastic. The effect on me? I learned to cook real food. By the time I was 12, I was making meatloaf and baking cookies. I still love to cook! Not a bad legacy.
Congrats on your award Rebecca, and thanks for organizing this thoughtful contest in recognition of our mums.
Growing up, my mom had ten or so standard dishes for family dinners. Lab jars of frozen pesto, thinly pounded chicken cutlets sauteed with capers and lemon, steak on the grill made tender by an overnight marinade of soy sauce, mustard and juice from canned peaches. Thinking back now, all of these dishes involved few ingredients that let the flavor shine through. This is my favorite way of cooking, and eating, and I am just now seeing how strongly my mom influenced this…
my mother was a horrible, awful cook. i remember hating halibut growing up in alaska because she would bake it into a brick of sawdust. i’ve spent my life exploring all the wonderful ways to properly cook everything she ruined for me.
My mother taught me that it’s not pea soup without a ham bone in it. How right she was.
What I learned from my mother was not so much what to eat, but that the whole family sat at the table and ate together. Her cooking improved quite a bit through the years, from the early days of fish sticks and macaroni from a box, to great dishes that I have in my repertoire now.
My mother influenced my cooking in ways that also affected my approach to making art and writing stories. She inspired her kids to be aware of tactile sensations — the crunch of celery in a dish, the coolness of the fork handle in young hands as we pressed down our peanut butter cookies, the smoothness of an egg about to be broken. But also, by illustrating the Sugarloaf Mountain Cookbook, she captured an element of the narrative force behind cooking and feeding others. In her pen and ink vignettes were entire feasts of STORY: food as something that brings us profoundly together through shared experience and pleasure, cooking as a process meant to be shared. I loathe celery now, but whenever I flip through the cookbook, written for a tiny mountain community in the 1970s, I am reminded of the beauty found in simplicity and clean lines. In food, in art, in life.
There was nothing I loved more as a kid than mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes with fried chicken, mashed potatoes with meatloaf, mashed potatoes with turkey gravy. So imagine my horror when my mother, tuning into some kind of gourmet inspiration, liberally sprinkled a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes with Spice Island dill weed! The potatoes were followed by “dilly carrots,” and dill sour cream sauce, among other inventions. This was too much for my 9 year old sensibilities!
And then last weekend, as I munched the dill green bean in my Bloody Mary, I tuned into my food inspirations and how those are likely much like hers. My mother and I have a complex relationship on many fronts, and food, I’m coming to know, is one of our strongest connections.
My mom worked nights as a nurse, and I have five brothers (I was in college before I ever experienced the concept of “leftovers”.), so our meals were large and plain most of the time, but for special occasions she’d cook amazing things. She also didn’t buy store-bought snacks, so if we wanted treats, we had to bake cookies ourselves. Probably twice a week one or another of the brothers would bake up 10 dozen cookies, enough to last 2-3 days.
After I went to college both my mom and I independently became foodies, and now we’re constantly passing back tips and recipes.
My mother is an amazing cook but the most valuable thing she taught me was how to shop for food; pick vegetables and fruit at the perfect ripeness, shopping seasonally, and how to find the best deals.
My mom was a basic cook and when she had to start working when I was a teenager she taught some simple meals to make. I enjoyed it and looked forward to hearing what a great job I did, which rarely happened cooking for my family. I still crave that atta boy for my food and have branched out to cook better and better, tastier and tastier food to get it. Now my mom lives with me and she most definitely appreciates the great food that I cook. She tells everyone the best thing about living with me, aside from living with her grandchildren, is the cooking.
My mother was one of 11 children and learned from her mother how to grow, slaughter, cook and preserve everything their farm in North Dakota could produce. With only an 8th grade education, she married at 17, had nine children, and taught us what she knew without a cookbook or fancy pans or ingredients. I’m a city girl, but I credit her for my passion for local food, farmers markets, and for making the best of what the earth offers.
Two words: apple pie. I leave the baking to my mom, the world’s best.
Unfortunately, growing up my Mother saw cooking more as a chore. Also, there were 3 very picky eaters in the family and Mom often cooked something we would like to eat rather than what she liked to eat. Now, I am married to a wonderful man and we really enjoy cooking together and trying new things. Now is it just my Mom living in our childhood house and she enjoys cooking for herself, family and friends. She lives on the East Coast but when we see each other there is usually cooking involved.
My mother was the daughter of an amazing Italian cook, my Gramma B. A little bit intimidating, to say the least. But that didn’t stop her. She knew about fresh food when frozen dinners and canned veggies became the stable of a 60’s household. She figured out what to do with all those zucchini my dad grew. She kept us knitted together via family dinners. But most importantly, she encouraged me to experiment, to cook. She gave me a subscription to Gourmet magazine when I was something like 11 or 12. She let me cater her friends’ dinner parties. She made me the cook I am.
My mom introduced me to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches. Nothing has been the same since.
How My Mother Influenced the Way I Cook?
Oh, my goodness, the memories are so vast and the material so deep I could easily write a book solely recounting the ways my mother has influenced my way of cooking. So as not to completely clog your blog, dear Rebekah, I will confine myself to the topics of vegetables, the concept of mise en place and a moment with raw food in the 1960’s.
• Vegetables: I am from the 1950’s boomer generation, so one must imagine an America when frozen green beans were considered upscale, simply because they did not come out of a Kroger’s can. One must imagine an era when the term “vegetable” meant carrots, green beans or corn. Period. Well, okay, for most families you could possibly extend that holy veggie trio to include pearled onions in cream sauce on Thanksgiving, or minced bits of celery in the green jello.) My mother would have none of that nonsense – her vegetable menu ran from Artichokes (steamed Globe artichokes with homemade Hollandaise and mashed Jerusalem artichokes with cream and ground cumin seed, right through freshly battered and fried Eggplant, straight into shredded Parsnip pancakes, and didn’t rest until we had a pan full of Zucchini sautéed in sweet butter and garden basil picked from the garden.
• Mise en place: The rules in the kitchen were simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy. After cooking, every dish and utensil used in preparation was sparkling clean and returned to its original spot, the floor swept and mopped, the counters scrubbed, the garbage taken out, the appliances wiped down. No handprints, no tell tale traces of culinary activity. I quickly learned that if I had everything organized at the start and kept it organized while cooking, clean up went more quickly. Having grown up with a mother who insisted on kitchen cleanliness and order both taught me how to have all meal prep dishes done before sitting down to eat, and inspired me to be more lax with my own child. In hindsight, I don’t think I did my dear child any favors…
• Raw food: In the 1960’s, my mother’s parents annually made the three-day train trip to visit us in Missouri from their home in New Mexico. My mother, on any ordinary day an amazing cook, went out of her way to step up her game during their visits. I remember my grandpa especially loved Steak Tartare. He would pull out (from the highest cupboard) my mother’s meat grinder, clamp it on to the counter, and carefully grind up raw steak into a red Pyrex mixing bowl. Then he used his hands to mix in a raw egg, parsley, salt and pepper and a dash of Worcestershire Sauce. He carefully arranged it on mount on platter, and the grown ups ate it with toast, and enjoyed cocktails. My three brothers and I were not tempted to try even bite of it.
One closing thought on learning cooking technique from my mother. With two notable exceptions, my mother did not teach me how to cook, she simply let me use the family kitchen, including ingredients, and have access to her cookbooks, no small thing as she had a cooking library. There were just two cooking lessons. The first was on how one properly prepares a hardboiled egg so it is cooked through but still tender, and the second on how to make Jello so it is thoroughly jelled, but not tough. I don’t remember anything from either lesson. I boil eggs until they are tough as golf balls, and Jello…well…Jello went out with the ‘60’s.
My mother, Della, is most powerful and in charge when she is in the kitchen. And I don’t just mean with a sweet little apron and baking cookies (although she bakes incredible cookies). I mean multiple gourmet creations going on if for a large dinner party of she and my dad’s friends or a Tuesday night dinner when I pop over to eat with her and my father. I owe most of my love and appreciation for “whole foods,” a term I never knew growing up to her. In probable rebellion to her own mother who was of the 1950’s post war generation who embraced the new and exciting/convenient pre-packed and processed foods, my mother always cooks everything from scratch. She has always grown many herbs and fruits in her garden (I owe knowing about sorrel to her). When we lived in Holland in the mid-80’s she learned Italian and French cooking after we traveled there multiple times. She was happy to go to the farmers markets there to buy the produce and meat and now goes to the University Farmer’s market here in Seattle every Saturday. She has continued to expand on an incredible repertoire of French and Italian cooking and lovingly replicates dishes she eats on her many trips there. She raised me with a full sit down home-made dinner every night from which I also learned the joys of delicious leftovers for lunch. I can’t thank her enough for teaching me one of the most meaningful experiences in life – to cook either just for the joy of the creation or to share it with people I love. And to also take pleasure in the planning and shopping…and just thinking about food. Thanks mom and happy Mother’s Day!!
Mom taught me to be a gracious and generous host no matter what my economic circumstances might be. Thing is, we didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. And on top of that Mom wasn’t a very good cook. Some days I observed her welcoming company in with slightly burned home baked cookies. Other days she’d serve up just a coffee with slices of toast with butter, sugar and cinnamon on top. I know now that it didn’t really matter. I mean, there always seemed to be long and thoughtful conversation and laughter aplenty about the living room. I look back now thinking, what a lovely and loving gesture Mom put forth. And I learned much later in life that sharing food lavish or humble brings people together. When I start stressing over what is good enough for company I take a queue from Mom. Simple can be rich when given with a genuine heart.
I remember being around 16 or so and idly commenting to my mother that I had no idea how to cook a chicken. She had raised my sister and I to be proud feminists, and had taught us to work hard and not take any crap — but she also was profoundly practical and couldn’t believe she had overlooked such a practical skill. How could any daughter of hers not know how to cook a chicken? She promptly thrust the raw chicken in my hands, and showed me.
My single mom made us work our asses off for a vegetable garden every year. I hated the measuring of the seed holes, the worms, the slug bait, the weeding, the hoeing…I hated it all. However, during the summer harvest season we had scrumptious all-vegetable dinners. They usually consisted of my mom’s “Italian Zucchini” dish, accompanied by corn on the cob and pickled cucumbers. For 3 months of the year, I truly didn’t want for meat. This experience instilled in me a love of eating vegetables. I get vegetable cravings often, and I’m grateful for that. But I’m still not planting my own garden, I opt for the farm share instead.
The random number generator at random.org has selected Nancy White (comment left at 1:30 p.m. May 8) and Donna (comment left at 10:06 May 5) as the two winners. Each one will receive a pair of tickets to the event, courtesy of the organizers. Thank you, all of you, for the wonderful posts! This was a great response, and we’ll do more contests in the future.