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by John Byers
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My mother was not Donna Reed or Jane Wyatt. What’s worse, in an era
when father knew best, she was a single mother. To support us, she
trained race horses. Since none of them ever won, we moved a lot. The
two constants through all of this shifting and moving were my mother’s
stews and spice cakes. In both cases, she was proud of never having
used a recipe. In the case of the stews, memory tells me she could have used a
cookbook. The cakes were a different story.
Although they looked like
no other cake I’ve ever seen – for some unknown reason, she baked them
in metal ice cube trays rather then cake pans – their taste haunts me
to this day. They were a wonderful mixture of exotic spices, sugar, and
ordinary flour cooked into light golden brown loafs. I enjoyed these
odd concoctions in private, but was not happy with them in public,
whenever they showed up in my school lunch. Luckily, I was never at
any school long enough to really be embarrassed by them.
It
was only after she died (while shoeing a horse) that I really began to
appreciate her. While I would gladly never have to taste anything ever
again that resembled her rather gluey stews, I often long for one more
last piece of her spice cake.
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