Cooking and baking for my family is one of my joys as a mom. I take pride in preparing healthy, flavorful food for my husband, sons and daughter and love to pore over recipes. I have a cupboard full of cookbooks and a box overstuffed with recipes, but that doesn’t stop me from subscribing to a cooking magazine.
So I was delighted when Cooking Light, one of my favorite food magazines, in its May issue, interviewed four famous chefs and asked them to recall a few of the best dishes their mothers used to make. The chefs’ favorites varied from rubbed pork with apricot glaze and sauerkraut, to lemon cake to braised short ribs.
Although, I’ve never made any of those dishes, I can relate to the feelings they stir up in the chefs. Some of my best childhood memories of times spent with my own family are centered around food; summer picnics, holiday gatherings, harvest lunches and just plain, old family meals.
Like most children I never thought much about the effort on my mom’s part to plan, coordinate and cook those meals. They somehow just magically appeared, were consumed in a flash and the dirty dishes and a few crumbs were the only evidence that remained.
Now that I’m an adult, I marvel at how my mom could, seemingly effortlessly, and most often, single-handedly, prepare those huge spreads while still managing day-to-day family and farm responsibilities. Each year when I’m flying around the kitchen trying to cook and organize Thanksgiving dinner, I am in awe as I recall earlier years when the sunflower harvest was delayed and my mom prepared a meal for 25 people in between helping my dad and brother juggle trucks from field-to-field.
Reading the Cooking Light article got me to reminiscing again about the love that moms put in to meal making and about some of my own favorite dishes.

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