There’s nothing like an early-morning trek to Mom’s house for a cheerful Sunday of vegetable-ricotta omelets, homemade turkey sausages, strawberry-pineapple salad, buttery herbed bread, homemade coffeecake, and some dark French roast coffee. Unlike in years past, Mom is now only an hour away by car, and considering everything we’ve been through to work on improving our relationship, and the breast cancer ordeal she endured within the last couple of years, and the fact that I love her a lot, it’s no trouble at all to get up early, shlep the family in the car all crusty-eyed, and arrive at her house in order to prepare a meal for all of us.
When I was a kid, I used to do this for her on special occasions and would bring the food to her in bed on a tray with some juice, a napkin, flowers in a bud vase, and a nice little note or card. These days it’s hard to accomplish a task like that when I am raising three kids in my home and my mom lives hours away. Just feeding my own brood takes a lot out of me sometimes. So this was real satisfying.
Also, I gotta say how much I enjoy cooking with my husband in the kitchen. He’s just awesome. On our drive to Mom’s house he was telling me a little more about his experiences cooking during the summers at Geneva Point Center, where he had to arrive in the wee hours of the morning to get the muffins started, and regularly had to prepare breakfast for 150 people. He said just the process of cracking all the eggs for a scramble took a significant amount of time. It was a very instructive job, and not necessarily one he’d want to return to, but thanks to that work, he truly does know how to cook for a crowd, and he enjoys it.
River’s boss at Geneva Point worked as head baker at a university during the rest of the year. At the university, he was conditioned to get up before everyone else to start baking the bread. As a chef, it’s all about the labor in the kitchen, sweating away over stovetops, being there on time to get the whole process rolling. At Geneva Point, though, he didn’t have to be up as early. It was River who had to arrive early to get things going, and his boss who would awaken early anyway (conditioned for it as he was), make some coffee, and sit outside his cottage taking sips and watching to see River cruise by on his bike. On those occasions River was late, the boss would come in the kitchen a while later and just snicker at him. Apparently he was a really nice guy. So I have him to thank for having a part in training my husband to be a great chef himself. Along with my husband’s mother, of course, who brought a love for Italian cooking to our family.
The omelets we ate were crêpe-thin, with mushrooms, red pepper, yellow pepper, onion, spinach, cilantro, and dollops of ricotta. Mmm.