Is that all you’re eating?

I loved watching my mother transform marbled ground beef into beautifully shaped patties. I watched her deftly dismantle a whole chicken, scramble eggs, splash Thousand Island dressing over iceberg lettuce, and stuff a twenty-pound turkey. She mixed the cookie dough, I rolled the cookies. Tagging along to the grocery store, I memorized everything she bought. I helped her set the table, carry platters of food, and put away the leftovers. Her cooking made the house smell so good.

When I grew up and moved out on my own, I practiced what my mother preached.

Things did not go well. Using Mom’s favorite brand of tuna and mayonnaise, I mutated tuna salad into paste. In my amateur hands, her tried-and-true recipe for crispy oven-fried chicken yielded limp, dusty poultry parts.

One daring evening, I invited my parents over for supper. Eager to show off my cooking prowess, I served Rock Cornish game hen. My mother had never eaten, much less cooked, Cornish hen. I put romaine lettuce in the salad. My father refused to touch it.

My sister-in-law, a fine cook, served my parents quiche Lorraine. Holy moly. She baked, not so successfully, my mother’s recipe for chocolate pudding pie with graham cracker crust, which, coincidentally, was my brother’s favorite dessert. (Tip: Do not use instant pudding.)

Mom never wavered from her cooking style and food choice. Occasionally adventurous (she ate pickled herring), she preferred traditional dishes like chicken soup, roast beef, and mashed potatoes. Her Surprise Chicken — a casserole of boneless, skinless chicken breasts baked with store-bought bread stuffing and canned mushroom soup — was pretty good.

“That’s awful!” she exclaimed, tasting French bread drizzled with raspberry-flavored olive oil.

Mom had no use for newfangled foods like egg custard pie and miniature chicken. She liked what she liked, and the rest of us adapted to her ways.

I gave up trying to impress my mother with my cooking. I conceded that I was no Julia Child, that iceberg lettuce wasn’t so bad, that Mom’s oven-fried chicken was the best I’d ever eaten, why bother to imitate? We went back to enjoying family suppers at my parents’ house. Mom prepared the food. I set the table. Everyone ate happily ever after. The End.