Tonight we had potato soup for dinner.
The potatoes I used were so uniform in size.
Nothing like the ones we used to grow in our
back gardens. We grew blue potatoes, red, new,
butter, sweet. Very few of the ones we dug up
came out nicely shaped. Usually I had to scrub
them quite vigorously to get the caked earth out of
the divots and indents. Years back, over 30 now, I
had a friend who counted the hours she spent in
the kitchen daily. We had roughly the same size family,
give or take a few, and our meal prep was similar.
Everything made from scratch, lots of it, on the cheap!
She calculated that most days she spent between 4-7
hours in the kitchen- preparing meals, table setting ,
dish washing, sweeping… I was sure I
spent as many hours. Meal preparation and all
that it entails is time consuming.
Tonight, I said to Mr. Fix-it before he tasted the soup-
whatever it taste like -tell me it’s great-even
if you have to lie. I vividly recall one of our sons
standing over me while I worked at the stove.
He did this most every evening. What is that, what
are you making? Most meals had no name or title.
I mostly answered, I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see.
Inevitably meals were not loved by all. Actually never.
One might love tuna noodle casserole, a few tolerate it,
and another one detest it. What’s a mother to do?
Just keep at it. And call “it” whatever you want to.
-my outside hours have suffered a bit in the cold- I hope I
can reach my goal-
TOH to Date: 153 hours and 3 min.
