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 I think it was Joan Rivers who joked about an epitaph that would suit
her: “I’d rather be here than in the kitchen!” Or was her line, “If God wanted women to cook, he would have given them aluminum hands?"
Either way, my mother has lived by both of these lines her whole life,
well at least for as long as I lived with her as a kid. So imagine my
and my sisters’ surprise when one sunny Sunday morning, while in our
early and mid-teens, we awoke to a basket of picture-perfect bran
muffins. Astounding.
We wondered what had suddenly possessed this woman whose disdain for the
kitchen was evinced, for example, by small hamburgers formed in the
palm of her hand, slightly bulging in the center, tapered at the edges,
and so over cooked that they would crumble into gray gri
stly beef pebbles. My mom had a fondness for ketchup as the panacea for
all cooking ills and one time, a favorite cousin of hers placed rolls
of TUMS at every place setting before one of her holiday dinners. Her
reputation preceded her.
My sister and I stared at the basket, at the plump brown muffins perched
in a perfect cluster. “Should we?” we tittered. We each plucked one of
the muffins from their nest and peeled off the paper wrappers. We did
not want to spoil the moment, but we were dying for a taste.
Tentatively, we put our lips to the muffin tops, then we took big
bites. Mouths full, eyes wide, we stared at each other for a second.
The shock was instant. Nothing about these beautiful specimens was
palatable, so we immediately spit out the bites we had taken and even
wiped our tongues to remove any traces of the dreadful things. When our
mother awoke, we asked her about the muffins and whether she was trying
to poison us, and she laughed as she explained that she may have
forgotten to add sugar and might have added measures of salt instead.
Yum.
 This is not to say that my mother’s cooking is a total loss. She makes a pretty good Thanksgiving turkey, spoons the cranberry sauce from the can carefully enough to keep the
lovely ribbing in tact, browns the marshmallows and the yams perfectly,
and the follows the green bean casserole recipe to the letter. In fact,
this is the meal she makes for every holiday because she does it so
well.
But the best part of the meal is the chopped liver appetizer she
makes from the turkey liver. Into the solid wood chopping bowl she got
from the hardware store when I was a toddler, she chops up the liver,
hard boiled eggs, and burnt onions and adds a little mayo instead of
schmaltz. Yet this is truly the best chopped liver I have ever had.
Unlike much chopped liver, which is usually as dense as caulk, this
chopped liver is salty, flavorful but not too rich, moist, and loosely
constructed. It may be a mistake, but to me it’s perfect.
Pamela Felcher is the English Department Chair at Hamilton High School's Music and Arts Magnet.
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