December 2, 2014 Advent with SusieJ

Food

Mom loved food: eating it, cooking it, watching others cook it. She was a great cook in a family of great cooks and bakers. I was lucky to grow up surrounded by good food.

Mom was an adventurous eater. She ate Chinese food before Yan began cooking on PBS, and vegetarian when it was just for "hippies." Eggrolls and hummus are standards now, but 40 years ago they were new and exciting. She cooked fondue and welsh rarebit because I was a "picky" eater, but liked cheese (not "Swiss" or those fat plastic slices though). We ate shellfish, especially steamed clams, when we could afford it. She routinely served osso bucco in celebration of my adult birthdays.

Her old photographs show rooms of happy people at parties, drinking cocktails mixed by my father. She loved to entertain guests, to be surrounded by friends. Parties started with an hors d'oeuvre, hummus in the 70s, port wine cheese in the 80s, brie in the 90s. For holidays or special occasions there would be a cocktail: eggnog at Christmas, whiskey sours in the summer, always served on a lovely tray. The table would be set with the good china and glassware, a cloth, a seasonal centerpiece, candles. The food always required time and skill to prepare. Mom made an effort to entertain well, to use food to show her guests their importance in her life.

She loved anything with a vegetable, and was, to someone who didn't like vegetables until college, far too willing to experiment with the newest plant sold in grocery stores. Eggplant. Spaghetti squash. Fresh spinach. Chinese cabbage. Portabello mushrooms. But that meant meals were never the same-old, same-old. The main course might be roasted chicken with potatoes, but the vegetable might be candied carrots (she really did try to cook foods I would eat), or the salad included cherry tomatoes or fresh spinach.

When Wegmans opened not five miles down the road, she was thrilled. We would negotiate how often I would drive her to shop there. It was easier when were were by ourselves, and not wrangling her husband (in the later stages of dementia) and grandson (in the earlier stages of life). With any shopping experience there was a risk of losing her, and needing to page for "Frieda Wolf to please come to customer service to meet your daughter," because would she leave her cell turned on so that I could call? No, of course not. She would drive her chair around and through throngs of other shoppers — always polite — picking up pretzel rolls and Greek-style yogurt. She would investigate every comestible.

We bonded over a love of Martha Stewart's cookbooks and magazines. Picking up the May issue meant I could try to wow Mom with something special for Mothers' Day. Mom was an early subscriber, and kept nearly a decade of back issues. She sold them before moving into the retirement home, but I have held on to the December issues.

She baked, and well, but it wasn't her "thing," for complicated reasons. I loved baking for her, and cooking for her, because I knew she took such pleasure in it. Providing food satisfies the most basic human need after oxygen and water, and to do it well brought both of us joy.

Family dinner celebrating a visit from Fred's sister. Me, Mom, Fred, his sister Any, Grandmom. My husband, Jorj, took the photo.