Mother’s Day inspired recipes and memories from our foodGizmo kitchens to yours

As I live 500 miles away from my family, I don't often get to spend Mother's Day with my Mom. I always like to call my Mom, tell her I love her, see how her day is going, and find out what she has planned. Throughout the day, I reminisce of times spent with my Mom and my family. My Mom loves to bake - cakes and cookies are her specialty.

One of my best memories of time spent with my Mom involves baking one of her favorite recipes, a Lazy Daisy Cake. The cake is a light sponge cake with a delicious vanilla overtone that pairs well with fresh fruit or with a broiled coconut topping. This cake is great for any level of baking expertise, has limited ingredients, and only takes 30+ minutes to bake. The reason I love this cake is that when my brother and I were in grade school, my Mom made this cake as a treat for us one weekend. With two young children running around the house, it was easy to get distracted and miss adding an ingredient. My Mom forgot the baking soda. As a result, she created a lasting memory that my family giggles about to this day. The Lazy Daisy Cake, while still delicious as ever, looked like the bottom of an egg carton with rolling hills and valleys. Amazing how something as simple as baking a cake and forgetting an ingredient can create a special moment in time.

I hope that your family meal time this Mother's Day creates such a memorable moment.

bGizmo

Whenever I ask my Mom what she would like for her birthday, Mothers’ day, or a family dinner get together I usually get the same request; “I love that short rib dish you make with Polenta”. What she is referring to is a Texas Short Ribs dish I found in my ‘America The Beautiful Cookbook’. I first remember preparing this dish for her when she visited me in college. Obviously it was a hit because that was 20 years ago and she still requests this recipe. I guess good recipes will always stick around.

Over the years, we decided that this dish goes very good with Polenta. For those of you not familiar with Polenta, it is made from ground yellow corn meal which is boiled in water to create a cornmeal-mush-like dish. Growing up in an Italian house hold this dish was a main stay for Sunday meals.

I hope you enjoy trying these new dishes for your Mom!

dhGizmo

For this Mother’s Day, instead of making something from my Mother’s recipe collection (she’s Korean and I was too lazy this last week to do all the chopping and marinating), I went to my recipe box and found my husband’s favorite recipe: Red Steak (called Red Steak because of the red tomato sauce used to braise the steak). When we were first engaged, my friends threw a recipe and cooking-inspired shower, and I was presented with a collection of the favorite recipes of all of my friends and family. My Mother-In-Law, knowing that Red Steak was John’s favorite, graciously provided me with her recipe.

We have been married for almost five years and this was my first attempt at making this dish for him. What surprised me was how opinionated my husband was in the preparation of this dish. At no other time has my husband commented or concerned himself on how something was to be made in the kitchen. Nunca, niltch, never. But, for Red Steak, he was almost puritanical about it as “That’s not how my Mom does it” and a disappointed “It won’t taste the same” flowed out of his mouth as he watched me substitute the tomato sauce with the left over tomato soup I had made the night before (I had forgotten to purchase the sauce at the store and, again, was too lazy to go back. Sense a theme?). However, as we sat down to dinner and my husband took his first bite, he was surprised to find that the Red Steak I had prepared, sans tomato sauce, was so close to the original that he couldn’t complain. So here’s a big THANK YOU to my Mother-In-Law, Rita, for 1: raising a wonderful son, 2: providing me with a recipe that is so flexible and mistake-proof that it made up for my lazy tendencies, and 3: providing me with a recipe that made him so happy.

Happy Mother's Day

dGizmo

If you have favorite recipes and memories of your Mother, we would love to hear from you!