Me: “Mom, I’m going to have to blog about you tonight.”
Mom: “Yeah, I know. Go ahead.”
My mother is a great sport. Obviously I’ve inherited that gene from her, because I keep eating her food. As my mom tells it, she used to be a great cook. I do seem to remember a pretty nice chicken casserole she made when we were kids, although it was never the same recipe twice. The three things that remained constants were (1) chicken, (2) croutons on the top, and (3) something green floating inside it because Mom says healthy dishes have something green in them.
I also remember our favorite dish as kids – we called it “Barf Chicken”. She baked chicken breasts with red wine and parmesan cheese. The smell is what inspired the naming of this dish.
My mom’s problem is not that she’s a bad cook. It’s that she feels as though every recipe (ever written) could do with a bit of tweaking on her part. As if it’s just shy of perfect the way it’s written, but she’s going to make it better either with additions, deletions or substitutions. The fact that most recipes have made it through pretty strenuous tests and edits before they made it to paper is lost on my mom.
I could dedicate an entire blog to her kitchen creations/manglings, but instead I’ll just stick with this post for this week’s fare. Last week I had a tough time. My father-in-law was very ill, my husband was out of town caring for him, and I was busy with work and kids. Mom was kind enough to come to my house and start dinner for me and the kids one night. I walked in to see her pouring a bag of shredded cheese into a pot of water.
“Umm, whacha makin’, Mom?”
“Broccoli Cheese Soup!”
“Wow, awesome. Are you using a recipe?” fear slipping into my voice…
“Yep.”
About a half hour later, Mom is standing at the stove, and I hear, “Well, shit.”
“What’s up, Mom? Something wrong?”
“Well, this stuff doesn’t look right. I don’t know what the hell I did wrong.”
“Did you follow the recipe?”
“Well, kinda.” Well kinda. Yeah. I should have known something was up.
“What did you change from the recipe directions, Mom?”
“Well, nothing really. It’s just that the recipe called for Velveeta cheese and I substituted a different cheese. I hate Velveeta cheese.”
“What kind of cheese did you use?” I mean, how bad can it be? Cheddar?
“Non-fat cheese.”
Alas. My mom did not understand that broccoli cheese soup is creamy and cheesy because of ALL THE FAT in the cheese and only Velveeta, that disgusting manufactured transfat frankenstein of a cheese, will melt into a soup-like construct.
The plasticky non-fat orange stuff (I refuse to call it cheese anymore) had clung in clumps to the broccoli and the water, which was still the consistency of water, had turned bright orange.
Voila! Broccoli Cheese Clump Soup! (email me for the recipe)
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