Back in the Kitchen...

Is it just me or is there something about being out of a kitchen for 6 weeks that just makes you want to bake and cook til the cows come home?  Seriously, while I'm "not cooking" I think of a zillion meal ideas and just can't wait until I am cooking again full time.  Unfortunately, I never write these ideas down and, once I'm back in the kitchen, I am searching desperately for meal ideas by the third day.  But when I do find an idea, I go to town!

There is something about a break from the kitchen that makes cooking and baking new, fresh, and enjoyable again.  Last night I decided that I was going to make sweet & sour meatballs with rice for supper.  It was one of my favourites while growing up and those are the things that appeal to me most these days.  I looked briefly for the recipe but with my Mennonite Treasury of Recipes packed away, I was left to fulfill my craving by memory.  Meatballs was one of the things that I often enjoyed making with my mom while I was growing up.  I loved getting my hands into the meat and mixing it all together (bear with me), shaping each individual meatball, and then plunking it carefully into the frying pan next to all the rest.  Cooking the meatballs was my favourite part, though with the frying pan so hot, I would often get splashes of grease stinging my hands and arms.  Of course it was never enough to burn me, and the fun of watching the meatballs until they were halfway cooked and then flipping them over to cook on the other side far out-weighted any spitting grease that came my way!  And the memory of making meatballs with my mom is what gave me the recipe yesterday.  I remembered mixing the meat with my hands and therefore could picture the different ingredients that went into them.  They didn't turn out quite as yummy as my mom's always did, but they never do, do they?  Some things just need a mother's touch, I guess...

Just now I was making some brownies.  (Have I mentioned how nice it is to just be able to walk into the kitchen and satisfy my cravings?!)  Another memory came to me as I was using as spatula to scrape the last of the brownie batter into the pan.  See, for the first few years that I remember helping my mom in the kitchen, she didn't have a spatula.  Different people have different "essentials" in their kitchens and, in my mom's kitchen, a spatula just wasn't one of those essentials.  I specifically remember the day my mom got a spatula.  It was August of 1994.  My parents were leading a missions trip to Paraguay, South America and our whole family was able to go along.  While we were gone for those 6 weeks, an interim pastoral couple stayed in our house and carried out the pastoral "duties" that my dad was missing while out of the country.  When we arrived home, we found a few new things in our kitchen...things that were obviously "essentials" in this other woman's kitchen that she hadn't found in my mom's kitchen.  Among those goodies was a rubber spatula.  I remember being quite disappointed in this new appliance the next time my mom baked something.  That spatula was far too efficient, leaving next to nothing in the bowl for us kids to enjoy!  My life changed a little that day.  I must say, though, that my mom got quite good at not using her spatula to the best of it's ability.  Somehow there was always a bit of batter left in the bottom of the bowl for her kids to lick out. : )

I hope my kids enjoy helping their mommy in the kitchen as much as I (sometimes) enjoyed helping my mom!