In her kitchen.

When I was growing up, our dinners were a family affair. The five of us would sit around the dinner table, which was always set by my mother, and then us three as we got older, and in the middle of the table were plates of steaming food. On any given night, you would assume that we were having guests over. There was a salad, rolls, mashed potatoes and our main dish. We were always “healthy” eaters, as my mother would say…her affectionate term for “over” eaters, if you ask me.

It wouldn’t be odd for Mom to make a complete Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of summer. And, when she cooked Thai food, there would be no less than three different dishes and a large pot of fresh rice for the taking. And, inevitably, a relative or a friend would just happen to stop by and be made to stay and partake in our meal.

My mom can cook anything and it tastes delicious. She still makes me lunch everyday when I go home to pick the Beans up. When I walk through the doors, I know exactly what she’s been cooking and as soon as I identify the scent (today, it was Thai Chicken Fried Rice), my willpower is out the window.

I didn’t get that gene from my mother. I got the shortness, the compulsion to shop, but not the innate ability to make a piece of chicken a culinary art. She has tried to console me by telling me that when she first married my father, she made spaghetti and meat sauce with ketchup and a pound of un-crumbled ground beef. I’ve sat at the kitchen table and watched her chop and mix and stir, hoping that her knack for just the right taste will seep into me with the scent of the cooking food, but it never does. I can’t even get a recipe right – even when I follow every direction. My mom says that’s the problem – I don’t deviate. She doesn’t measure anything.

I have memories of my favorite dishes and I try to recreate them for J and the beans. So far, the only dish that I have been able to make that is in the ballpark of something my mom would make is Gram’s shepherd pie. It was really good, but it wasn’t right.

And it’s the reason that I have a love-hate relationship with cooking. When asked recently what I talent I would like to acquire, I mentioned that I would love to become a great cook. I love food. I enjoy it and I rarely deprive myself of it. I love to eat out at new restaurants, I love to shop in beautiful fruit markets and pick out new and fresh produce and spices. But, when I try to cook, it just doesn’t taste right because it doesn’t taste like hers. J loves my cooking. The beans don’t seem to mind it. But I can’t stand it. It’s why we eat out and carry out so much.

Often, my mom will send me and the girls home with dinner for J, or she’ll have my dad call me to let me know she’s made extra chicken and dumplings and that they’ll bring it over later. Or, when the sisters are in town, she’ll spend the whole day in the kitchen and we’ll have a feast just like old times…grazing on tidbits all day long, hovering around her in the kitchen and picking at each other, vying for the position of taste tester while we talk over and interrupt each other. Meanwhile, J and Dad sit in the living room and attempt to drown out our voices with the television.

Some days, when we’re in her kitchen, I look at the Beans and wonder which one will carry on her flavors and cook for me when she’s gone. But there’s a thought I can’t bear to continue and so I return again to studying her art.