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Friday, September 28, 2007And the Genetic Link Is VerifiedMy mother bakes wondrous things: Christmas Nut Tussies, Rhubarb Pie, Poppy Seed Roll, Zucchini Bread. She arrived on Sunday evening, fresh from the airport, bearing a loaf of homemade, pre-sliced zucchini bread, which our family absorbed into its various digestive systems within minutes. So Mom graciously announced that she would bake two fresh loaves of zucchini bread as soon as we picked up the necessary ingredients. Two days later, I happened upon my mother in the kitchen, stirring a congealed mass in my lime green plastic bowl, her face reflecting consternation. "What's wrong, Mom?" "Ohhhhhhhhh." (That was a Class One whine.) "This didn't get right. This is supposed to be thin. I pour this stuff into the pans. But this! This is..." She lifted the spoon. The brownish stuff in the bowl in no way resembled a thin, pourable batter. It looked more like a dough ball bathed in oily slime. "I think maybe it's your flour," Mom continued. "When I first looked at it, I thought, this isn't as silky as it should be." Silky? "Uh, Mom, it's just flour. Are you sure you measured everything right?" "Yes, I measured everything right!" Mom's tone was only slightly defensive. "Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe it just makes the flour, you know, flat." Flat? "Well, is there something missing from the recipe? Something you didn't copy?" "This is my original recipe! I've gone over and over it. Maybe it's the sugar. I couldn't find that other sugar..." "What did you use?" "It was in here." She sidled up to the pantry door and began to peruse my haphazard collection of Tupperware containers. "This one. I think." She handed me an empty container. I bent my face to it and sniffed. "This smells like rice," I said. "It wasn't rice! I know what rice looks like!" She grabbed another container. "Here. This one." She swiped her finger over a slight, crystalline residue on the bottom of the container and licked it. "See? Sugar." She offered me a taste, which I declined. There was no telling what had actually been stored in said container -- or when. I didn't keep my current sugar supply in there. "I don't know what to tell you, Mom." Actually, I wanted to tell her that she had obviously made a big boo-boo, and it wasn't the fault of my flat, non-silky flour or mysterious sugar supply. But I had no answers for her, so I left the kitchen in the hope that everything would turn out all right in the end. Later, I sauntered downstairs, drawn by the delightful scent of cinnamon. Two golden loaves sat cooling on the kitchen counter. "So, did they turn out okay?" "Oh." Mom's expression was half disappointed, half sheepish. "Well, remember you said the container smelled like rice? Jonathan figured it out." She took a breath. "It wasn't actually rice rice. It was Cream of Rice." "You added Cream of Rice instead of sugar??" "Well, it looked just like sugar. It's white!" I wasn't sure if it was okay to laugh at this point. "Mom. Cream of Rice doesn't look anything like sugar." Nope. She insisted that the Cream of Rice did, indeed, look precisely like sugar. Which is why she added it to the bowl. And of course, the whole thing was my fault for not keeping my sugar in a well-marked container in the first place. I just never dreamed someone would try to sweeten a recipe with Cream of Rice. Otherwise I most certainly would have labeled my staples in bright red lettering: "FLOUR" and "SUGAR" and "CREAM OF RICE -- NOT TO BE USED TO SWEETEN ZUCCHINI BREAD." Yes, we tasted the bread. I had to spit mine into the garbage can. It was that bad. My dad, on the other hand, ate an entire slice. "MMM. It's not bad." The man's taste buds are dead. I swear. Naturally there have been a string of we-can't-let-this-one-die comments. You can't make a mistake like this in a household of snide people and expect to not be reminded hourly. We've offered my mom Cream of Rice for her tea; we've asked her to make another loaf of Zucchini/Cream of Rice bread; we've asked my dad to remember to pick up some more Cream of Rice at the grocery store. Poor Mom. Not really, though. She was kind enough, after all, to pass the genetic code for this kind of thing directly to me. I am allowed to laugh at her, you see, because it's like laughing at myself. And fortunately, my mom laughs, too. She finally did make two fresh loaves of zucchini bread this morning. Less than a minute after she'd popped them in the oven, I heard her moaning and lamenting to herself. "What happened, Mom?" "Ohhhhhhhh." (Another Class One whine.) "I forgot to add the zucchini." And so it goes... |
About Me
I am: Mother to five stunningly individualistic children... Writer of young adult fantasy... Passionate advocate for Women At Home... Madly in love with my husband... In need of Organic Gourmet Chocolate on a regular basis. I've got a Paypal account if you'd like to contribute to the cause....
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7of my readers are feeling chatty:
Tell her I'll bake the pies when we come up for Thanksgiving!
I'm still laughing at Dad eating a whole slice!
Be nice to Mama or Lisa will slap family with a big wet noodle. :0)
What exactly is silky flour?
I can accept no sugar and no zucchini, but not having silky flour?
LOL
LOL, thats funny...my aunt made "tuna surprise" once except she forgot to add the tuna..."surprise!"
Isn't the cake flour that comes in the silly teensy boxes in the grocery store called "Silk Flour" or something like that?
Awesome story! I can't publish the things my mom does. ;-)
We have the classic "Cinnamon Fudge" in our family. It was my sister though. She ran out of cocoa, so she filled the remaining measure with cinnamon because it was brown. Rather a unique flavor. My brother loved it and gobbled it up.
My own classic was a tuna and orange salad. It was basically tuna, celery, apples, and mayo. I didn't have any apples, but did have oranges.
Tasted horrible, but mom made me eat it.
So what do you call zuchini bread when there is no zuchini?
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