I Use My Mother’s Pot

Posted by: Sparky on: Sunday, November 21, 2010

• In: family
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I woke up early today with an urge to make some sauce.  ( When I say sauce, it should be understood that it’s tomato sauce, sauce for spaghetti or lasagna, it’s sauce.) So before I put on my morning coffee, fill my mouth with my meds that one gets used to at a certain age, I pull out my mother’s pot.  It’s almost fifty years old now, skid marks on the bottom, a little dented here and there, but still good inside and it makes the best sauce, well, almost the best.  It’s not my mother’s.  I remember her leafing through the newspaper looking at ads and telling me that even though I don’t cook much, ( I was a shortlived career woman at the time), I needed a good pot now that I was going to be a housewife.  It was the fifties, what can I tell you?   Times were a little thin in those days, I was very young and wedding showers were something one went to with a wrapped present for someone else, so I knew my mother was figuring out how much she could spend out of her grocery allowance to buy me  the best kitchen tool I might use to make wonderful sauce.  She offered her services in showing me how to make sauce, something I am so grateful for every time I put on my stove.  I was more than a little apprehensive as to what my part would be.  Genny, ( my mother) was the best cook “ever”.  She truly was and still is in my estimation.  I’ve had a lot of wonderful dishes cooked by so-called experts, but my mother is the reigning  queen in anyone’s kitchen.

There I was watching Genny open an array of cans with tomatoes or some crushed version of them. Meatballs were simmering in a pan on the stove while she emptied the tomatoes into her pot, and she’d say, “Now take your time when cooking, let the cans of paste cook down slowly before adding the others.  Cooking isn’t hard, she’d say, you just have to be patient, thorough.”  Yes, I know what you’re thinking, a little like life.  My mother was always telling me to take my time, don’t rush through “cooking” or anything else, something that’s taken me a lifetime to achieve.  Of course, she was right.  What’s your hurry?  If you take your time, you might enjoy it better and it will be better tasting.   I’m a little crochety now, not as sure footed as I once was, but I still get to where I’m going and I am enjoying life.  Slowing down has its’ advantages, I see better, hear only what I want to,  life is less stressful, tastes pretty good.  And I make great sauce.  Thanks, Mom.