This post is dedicated to my cousin and one of my BFFs, you know who you are and I'm sorry it took me over a week to write this.
Last week I spent two hours on the phone with the person to whom this post is dedicated to. We don't live in the same city and the phone call was long over-do. If we did live in the same city she is the kind of friend that could show up on my doorstep unannounced and I wouldn't care (well, maybe I would care just a little bit) that my house was messy and I was still in my pyjamas in the middle of the afternoon.
We talked about everything. Our kids, our husbands, our extended family. It got to be around 3:30 in the afternoon and I started to rummage around the kitchen, looking at what I had to make for dinner. I think that needs some further explanation. I don't like to cook. I don't like to grocery shop and I don't really care what I eat. I could live on peanut butter sandwiches, french fries, onion rings, frozen pizza and KD. I was always a picky eater, which used to drive my mother-in-law crazy since she is a gourmet cook and always makes one of what someone else in our family enjoys at our weekly Sabbath dinners. There are 24 of us altogether when everyone is in town but usually about 14-16 of us show up on a regular basis. All of that cooking is a lot of work for an 80 year old woman but she refuses to give it up. She says that she will continue to make these weekly dinners until she no longer can; it gives her purpose and keeps her family together. And it works. All ten grandchildren are very close, more like brothers and sisters than cousins and eagerly seek each other out for advise and company. For example, when my son came home from Israel last month he got up at 7:00 the next morning so that he could go and have breakfast with his youngest (18 months old) cousin before she went to day-care.
I used to make dinner every night when my kids were growing up. Than, ironically, since my husband owns a business whose prime product is deli meats and hot dogs, my eldest turned into a vegetarian when he was about 15 years old. His younger sister, who never really ate red meat to begin with, promptly followed suit. I scanned vegetarian recipe sites, learned about tofu and discovered the word of soy products. I made spaghetti and "meat" balls out of soy made to look like ground beef. I discovered "chicken" and "beef" strips for my stir fries. That didn't last very long, although. My kids both taught themselves to cook and I, well, didn't.
Anyway, back to my dinner. She emailed me a recipe for a frittata. I followed the instructions and it came out great. It turned out that both of my kids had dinner plans already but my son stuck a fork in it for a taste when I pulled it out if the oven. "Mom, this is actually good!" High praise for a cook like me. When I got up the next morning I found my son eating the the leftovers for breakfast. Enough said. Thanks, D.
