Things I learned from my Mom, first posted November 20, 2008

Julia Kloczkowski Mitchell 1919-2007

My mother was a great cook.  She was incredibly messy in a dotty, Julia Child sort of way.  For instance, she’d hurl pork cutlets into a skillet about a yard away, landing them dead center, olive oil spattering. It was fun to be around my Mom when she cooked.  Perhaps it was the strength of that splatssstt on the meat, instantly searing it that made for such delicious fare, or simply that she was happy in her kitchen, or maybe it was just the madcap way she conducted herself there, a style that followed her no where else in her life. 

If Mom was a great cook my grandmother Sophia must have been a summa great cook.  She made everything from scratch, typical of her time, but her everything included marvelous poppy seed cakes, buttery cookies and pierogis to feed her family of eight.  I know this because my Mom made these foods too. 

My grandfather, Antoni, had a huge vegetable garden outside their small white clapboard house in Millville, Massachusetts.  He grew cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, horseradish, potatoes, herbs, garlic, beets, the works.  My grandparents left Poland as teenagers and never saw their parents again but the foods of their childhood were a constant throughout their lives.

Mom moved to Washington DC in 1941 then years later, to St. Louis with my stepfather.  One snowy day shortly after leaving DC Mom was homesick. She started making pirogi.  That’s when my grandmother visited —sort of—for it was as if they were mixing the ingredients together, the flour, eggs, sour cream, then stirring, kneading, rolling, and filling the little pastry pouches with steamed cabbage.  It took most of the day, flour dust everywhere, while a large kettle was boiling, polka music playing on the radio. 

That snowy day in St. Louis I didn’t learned how to make pirogi.  Instead I learned crucial things about my mother and grandmother.  What you did in your kitchen can feed you in many ways.  I also learned the value of starting with fresh, natural ingredients. These are lessons that still resonate with me, specially now, a year since Mom died, at age 88.

Mom’s approach to cooking was very ‘Old World.’  She was a natural foods advocate her whole life, and an early fan of Adelle Davis, one of the first pioneers of unprocessed foods in post-World War II America. 

With these biases on the table let me now make the case for making your OWN yogurt, croutons and salad dressing which can save you at least $200 a year, plus give you more control over what you eat.  The kicker is we’re only talking about a 30 minute a week time investment.

Family gathering, St. Louis for Mom's funeral October 2007       photo: Jim