Missing Mom

It's a really rainy Saturday and I had the overwhelming urge to call my Mom.  Her 87th birthday would have been this past Thursday, so she's really been present in my heart and mind this week, and even this month.  She died six years ago this past August, and sometimes it seems like yesterday.  I can remember her saying as I went off to college - "Don't call me every week at the same time.  That way I won't worry if you miss a call."   It was terrific advice, and I passed it on to my sons as they left the nest.  I did call my mom almost weekly, sometimes even more frequently, but I never let more than 10 days between phone calls go past.  What did we talk about?  Rarely anything anyone else would consider important.  Of course we talked about the kids, work, weather, etc. but we also got into animated conversations about books and TV shows.  And  recipes!  She was my "go-to" person when I needed a new idea or help with cooking roasts or new dishes.  She would have loved hearing about all the experimentation I've been doing the past 2 summers with all the produce from our local CSA share --- new ideas about how to use zucchini to "What on earth do I do with celeriac?"   I cook like my mom - most meals are produced without recipes, or if we use a recipe, it's just a springboard.  It's always been a family joke, first when I was growing up, and now in my own family:  "I tried a new recipe but I didn't have X so I substituted Y, and I didn't have Z, so I used A instead,"  and the family always asks "So what did you substitute?" when new items appear.  It was always (and still is) earth-shattering when recipes are presented without change.    Since my mom's been gone, the internet has been my main source of information,  but my kids (and occasionally a sibling) will call whenever they're perplexed by a cooking question.  Today's urge to "call home" was prompted by the fact that I decided to make soup for dinner.  Mom always made what we called "Refrigerator soup."  She'd start with a meaty bone or some stew beef, lots of onion and celery, and then add whatever veggies or even leftovers needed using up.  She'd augment it with beef broth, canned tomatoes, V8 or tomato juice as needed.  Today's soup is starting from some stew beef, onions, carrots, fresh herbs, and celery.  I've got some beets in there and a small head of cabbage.  The liquid is beef broth, a can of crushed tomatoes, a slurp of vinegar and a bit of sugar.  Later additions will include some left over egg noodles and I hope to hide some eggplant in there!  (My husband is not fond of this, and this has been the abundant vegetable from the CSA  share this summer!)  Anyway, I kept my mom's soup kettle for a really long time but recently realized it was time for it to go.  She always made soup in an electric soup kettle.  The kettle held about a gallon of soup, and stood on 4 legs.  At some point during my youth one of the legs fell off, so for the rest of my mom's cooking career the 4th leg was always a can of tomato paste!  She continued using that kettle for the rest of her life!  I know that one Christmas I decided to buy her a new one, but the model had been discontinued and she didn't like any of the alternatives.    I couldn't bear to throw it away when we cleaned out her house, and I brought it all the way back to NH from Indiana.  It sat unused in the back of an overcrowded cabinet.  This past summer I finally realized that the memory of the kettle was enough, and it got thrown out.   So as my soup simmers away on the stove, I'm thinking of my mom and I'm wishing I could call her.

Two More Books Read

I finished 2 more books - one light read The Chase by Clive Cussler, and Blackwater Ben by William Durbin which was a middle school novel.


I've read a lot of Clive Cussler who has a series featuring his alter ego, Dirk Pitt, who is a diver and oceanographer who works for NUMA - a quasi-governmental agency that saves the world from one disaster after another. They are quick reads, usually with "thrills and spills" and I started reading them a long time ago on the recommendation of my mom. I really miss my mom's recommendations - she introduced to me a lot of different types of books. They all were on the "light" side of fiction but what a variety -- Georgette Heyer, Daphne DuMaurier, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Clive Cussler, Dick Francis, Maeve Binchy, Sam Llewellyn, Jan Karon, Dorothy Sayers, Dorothy Eden, Ian Fleming, Ken Follet, Janet Evanovich, Miss Read, Elisabeth Olgivie --- the list goes on. There were some authors she loved that drove me nuts - her Harlequin romances for example, but in general we enjoyed similar tastes for recreational reading. Sometimes when I'm browsing through my local library's shelves, I'm hit with a huge wave of nostalgia and grief when I run into an author my mom loved or an author she introduced me to. For most of my adult life, I lived 1000 miles away from her, but we talked often, and in just about every phone call, we shared what we were reading and recommended books to each other. I really miss those discussions. My sisters and I try to fill her shoes - and we email each other with book recommendations frequently.

The Chase is not a Dirk Pitt novel. It's the story of a turn of the 20th centure detective who is in pursuit of a master thief. It's set in 1906 and the San Franciso earthquake plays a part in the novel as does the railroad.

I read Blackwater Ben as the result of a book project gone wrong! A student presented his book project to the class last week and it was clear from his presentation that he hadn't read the book. Since I hadn't either, I spent an evening enjoying a tale of a young boy spending a winter as his dad's assistant as cooks at a logging camp. The sad part of this is that after talking to the student in question, I discovered that he and another student who I also teach, both plagiarized the written portion of their projects. It was clear from my first glance that the first student had plagiarized but what a convoluted tale transpired. Student #1 offered to write student #2's report if student #2 did the "art part". Student #2 received a report from the first student and typed it. He then left it at home, and mom faxed it to me because she knew it was due. When I received the faxed report, it was immediately apparent that student #2 hadn't written it. When I asked him if he knew student #1 hadn't written it, he admitted that it "seemed better than his usual level of writing." But he typed it anyway. The report had been copied word for word from a review at the Barnes and Noble website . When I talked to student #1 he admitted that he'd copied his book project from the internet too. I hadn't caught it at first because the report he'd turned in had a number of grammar and spelling mistakes. Sure enough when I googled his project I found a Wikipedia entry from a 4th grader that he'd copied!!!
Both students received failing grades and afterschool detentions, and consequences at home. I've had plagiarism before but this one took the cake! The really sad part is that the assignment I asked them to was designed to prevent plagiarism. Instead of a book review, I'd aske them to write a description of the main character, a description of an important setting, a 5 sentence summary of the plot, and a paragraph describing their favorite scene/event in the book. For the "art part" they had to dress a potato like the main character and place it in a diorama depicting an important scene.

Oh, yes, I enjoyed both books.