Dinner Isn't Ready 'Til the Biscuits Are Burned

I'm missing my mother this Mother's Day week-end.  I know she's in a better place, but I can't help thinking - if I only had one more day with her... oh the questions I would ask.  Happy Mother's Day Mama.   I love you more and more every day that I live.

As evening approached, the disciples came to Jesus and said, “This is a remote place, and it is getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat”. “ We only have five loaves of bread and two fish”, they answered. “Bring them here to me”, Jesus said…. They all ate and were
satisfied. Matthew 14:15-16, 20

My mother was about the best cook in North Carolina. She could cook a roast that would melt in your mouth. Her macaroni and cheese recipe is carried through our family like a shrine. She invented Chicken Nuggets – she called them “chicken bits” - long before KFC ever thought of them. I even learned to eat green beans when she cooked them. My son called them “Gangy” beans – those were the only ones that he would eat. No one else made green beans like her.

We had either rice or grits at every meal…. Yes, at EVERY meal. Grits and rice were precious to my mother. Rice was never thrown away until it had been heated over so many times that the bottom of the rice pot was black.

There were a couple of things that mother didn’t do. She didn’t bake homemade cakes. She used cake mixes. I remember in grammar school when our mothers were asked to bring cakes to the school barbeque. Homemade cakes only please… that’s what the note would say when I brought it home from school. Mother made a cake every year – with a cake mix. She dressed up the yellow layer cake with chocolate frosting (also from a box) and arranged pecan halves on top in a circle. Those pecans were supposed to fool the grade mother for my class to think that the cake was indeed homemade. Mother said that if Betty Croker spent all the time and money that she did perfecting the mix used to make that cake, she didn’t see the need to try to perfect it.

Mother also had a thing about burnt biscuits. We had a little joke at our house – dinner wasn’t ready until `til the bottom of the biscuits were burned. When we smelled the burnt bread, it was time to eat. No problem, we just had ½ of the biscuit and the rest of the meal was fabulous.

Mother didn’t win prizes for her biscuits. Or maybe she just liked burned bread. When my grandfather lived with us, mother once apologized to him for burning his toast at breakfast. Trying to make her feel better, Granddaddy told her not to worry about it, he liked burned toast. Big mistake, Granddaddy! He had burned toast every day of his life that he lived with us. We had lightly brown toast for breakfast. Mother always smiled sweetly and handed a special platter of toast to Granddaddy every morning – charred – just the way he liked it.

Mother loved us – and she showed it by cooking very special meals for us – just the way we liked them. Sometimes she would cook several entrees so that everyone had their favorites. That was her gift to us. Each meal was seasoned with salt and pepper and a lot of love. Cooked to order – burnt toast and all.

Lord, thank you for mothers who love us. Thank you for special meals and special smiles and wonderful special memories. Teach us, Lord, to recognize those things we do well – and to admit what we don’t do so well, like baking cakes or making biscuits. Thank you most of all, Lord, for loving us and smiling with us and allowing us memories. Amen