For the Love of Vegetables

It makes me so sad that so many of my childhood memories revolve around conflict and troubles. I don't think that was the intention or goal, but unfortunately, it is what it is. One of these memories involved spaghetti.

My mother made spaghetti, but being the wonderful mother she was, she wanted us to eat our vegetables. How did she add vegetables to spaghetti? She cut it up into cubes and added it into the sauce. If my memory hasn't failed me, the vegetable she attempted to add was cucumber. Now you might be thinking, cucumber doesn't really belong in spaghetti. And I'm right there with you. It doesn't. And I didn't want to eat it. And I wasn't an anti-vegetable child. I just didn't want cucumber in my spaghetti. So I picked it out, didn't eat it, and a really big conflict ensued in our house. 

That's another story. And this was over 20 years ago. 

***

I made spaghetti this week. We hadn't had spaghetti in a while and it was an easy dinner, so I made some. We also had an abundance of squash and zucchini at our house which needed to be used before it went bad. I'd already been roasting it in the oven and even experimented with baking zucchini chips. So what did I do?

Yup, I added that zucchini and squash into my spaghetti. But unlike my mother, I did it with tact and caution. 

1. Blend it in.

My mother failed to blend it in. I know she wasn't trying to hide it, but if you're more than simply cooking food to eat, you would understand that food texture and shape has to be similar enough to blend or different enough to provide contrast. Adding cucumber to spaghetti? Definitely needs to be similar enough to blend in. You DON'T want your cucumber providing contrast in spaghetti. And my mother failed to do that. 

I, on the other hand, understood. So I julienned my zucchini and squash. And it blended into my spaghetti beautifully. My three-year-old and one-year-old both ate it with no complaints. 

2. Quantity Matters.

When adding a "foreigner" to a normal recipe, you can't overpower the usuals. I made sure not to add too much to keep it in the background of the dish. To go with my one pound of sausage and one pound of pasta, I added half a zucchini and half a squash. It turned out to be the perfect amount. I was actually thinking to myself as I was cooking that I may have been able to get away with a little more if I wanted to. But it was a really nice amount.

As much as I love my mother and as much as she took care of us, cooking was not her forte. I learned very little about cooking and food preparation from her. I watched cooking shows instead and put my tv time to good use. Jacques Pepin has always been my favorite. She always said, if I was going to watch so many cooking shows, I might as well learn something from it and cook. 

Yes, Mother. 

Oregano

I don't grow stuff outside. If you read one of my previous posts, you would have found links to all my failed growing projects. I'm lucky if I can grow grass. 

I was poking around outside one day, probably watering some grass, and I smelled something. It was familiar and fragrant. I found the plant producing this scent and then it clicked in my head because I'd just cooked with it recently. It was oregano.

Now I don't have a garden and I didn't plant any edibles intentionally. But this was unmistakably oregano. It's been there since we bought the house and has continued to grow year after year. I've never picked it or used it. Until now.

This year, I looked up when the best time to harvest oregano was and the best drying processes. I waited, and would occasionally sniff around the plant to see how strong the aroma was. I kept waiting. May passed. And then June arrived. Most websites I read told me to wait until the flowers start forming for the strongest flavor. Another website told me early June. So I watched and waited. 

Just before the middle of June, I saw some flower buds starting to form. A friend had just happened to visit me as well so the two of us cut a bunch of stems off and then tied them up to dry.

I cut a lot of oregano. This may turn into a yearly task.
Next year, I can ask my four-year-old to help me.

We hung them around my kitchen in bundles with twine. I had just elevated my kitchen from a normal updated kitchen to a rustic, Magnolia-style kitchen.

How can herbs tied with twine hung upside-down look so elegant? I have no idea.
We ended up moving these later.

Finding places to hang them to dry for 4-6 weeks was tricky. With young children, I couldn't hang them too low or else my one-year-old would grab at them. We opted to hang them from some upper cabinet handles on a built-in that doesn't get used often. 

After about two weeks, I realized some of the oregano leaves were starting to fall by themselves or if the bunches were disturbed  because of this, I made the decision to pull them all off the stems and continue to let them dry in a bowl  this probably isn’t the traditional fashion for drying oregano, but considering I wanted to save my oregano from the floor and ultimately the trash, this was the concession.

My big bowl of oregano leaves waiting to be ground down or crushed.

After about five weeks of drying, I ground them down and packed them into two old spice jars and a mason jar. So much oregano! I used them in cooking for the first time today. I'll be blogging about today's meal in a later post so stay tuned for that one. 

A Piano and a Teddy Bear

Three years ago today, we were in the car. I was sitting in the backseat with my daughter, who at the time, was three months old. My husband was driving. We were going to Austin for a wedding. During one of my daughter's naps, I was just staring at her calm, sleeping face, thinking. And I thought of my mother's birthday, and I thought of how I she'd never get to meet my daughter or any of my future babies. And then I started crying.

My husband heard me crying from the driver's seat and he reached his hand back. I reached up and held it for a while. He didn't know why I was crying, and he didn't really need to. 

When I raise my children now and deal with their various problems and quirks, I think back to my own mother and the problems and quirks she put up with when I was a child. She used to bring me special toys in the car with her to pick me up from school because I would request something to play with during the car ride home. She would hear me whimpering at night and come to me because I was afraid of the dark and too scared to get out of bed to go get her myself. She took care of me when I was sick.

I never was able to truly understand these things until I became a mother myself because I was so young when I lost her. But I think these actions and services brought her joy as a mother. Because I know they bring me joy. When my daughter asks me to make a specific meal for her and then eats it. When she tells me her stories of the day at night before bed and recount what we did together. When she asks me to play with her and read her specific books. And some of the requests she asks for can get ridiculous and nonsensical. But I do it because they bring me joy. 

When my mother died, we were deciding what to put on her gravestone. We wanted to pick four images, one for each corner. The four images we chose were a piano, a Bible, praying hands, and a teddy bear.

The funeral director looked at us, the children, when we chose these images: Are these images to represent your mother or you? Normally the teddy bear goes on child gravestones.

I remember hearing her words and not really processing them. I don't remember anyone trying to justify the choices. To be honest, why should she have cared? 

Later when we shared with the rest of the family what we had chosen, my grandmother said something very poignant.

You guys did such a great job choosing images to represent your mother. the Bible and praying hands represented her faith. She loved listening and watching you play piano. And she loved watching you play with your stuffed animals. They brought her joy.

The piano and teddy bear did not represent her as a person, but they symbolized her role as a mother and the effect we had on her with our lives as well as our importance to her. I have no regrets about what is on her gravestone. Not once have I ever visited and thought to myself, it's strange to see a piano and a teddy bear.

Happy Birthday, Mommy.