Cooking with Mom

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Toni Leland

Not a week goes by that I don’t find myself in the kitchen with my mother. Mind you, she hasn’t been with us for many years, but she still influences the food of my heart. Two of her ingredient-stained, dog-eared cookbooks sit among my own modern volumes. My pies unfold beneath the satiny sheen of her wooden rolling pin. Her cast-iron skillet still serves up melt-in-your-mouth pot roast and Swiss steak.

Mother taught me everything I needed to know in the kitchen, during an era when women loved to cook and kept their families well-fed. She taught me how not to boil an egg that rivaled the consistency of Silly Putty®, secrets to flaky, golden pie crust that didn’t come from the freezer case, and how to make gravy that wouldn’t do double-duty as wallpaper paste. She introduced me to interesting flavor combinations and the fun of trying something new. Mom adored cream and butter, and used both lavishly in her cooking. Her favorite query was: “What shall we have under our butter?”

Making do

During the late 1940s, homemakers emerging from the burdens of World War II found it difficult to give up their thrifty habits and, as the country regained access to foodstuffs that had disappeared during those long war years, housewives found innovative and frugal ways to produce delicious meals. Those children of the Great Depression – having survived daily sandwiches of lard with cracked pepper, or turnip greens wilted in salt pork fat – knew the meaning of hard times. Then came the war, and struggles with depleted food stores and rationed staples. Coffee and sugar were strictly rationed; by 1942, meat was rationed at 2¹/² pounds per adult per week; eggs and chicken were not rationed, but scarce and expensive. Providing nutritious meals was a challenge. When the war ended, those same homemakers found it difficult to embrace the convenience foods that began to appear: cake mixes, dry yeast, instant potatoes and quick rice.

In the 1950s, frozen pot pies, fish sticks, TV dinners, instant pudding and Rice-a-Roni® took America by storm, and housewives began to embrace the ease and speed with which delicious family meals could be prepared. But they still wasted nothing. My mother’s “roly-poly” was my favorite treat – leftover pie crust rolled out, slathered with butter (of course), sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, then rolled up and baked alongside the pie.