In honor of Mothers Day- Favorite meal your mother cooked growing up.

Red sauce and meatballs. To this day, walking into her house to the smell of red sauce cooking always brings me back.

Round Steak and gravy over rice

Or

Chicken Stew with a side of corn

Smothered seven steak and potatoes.
RIP, Mom

Fried pork chop or fried chicken, fried squash, fried okra, peas, cornbread and sliced tomatoes - in the summer when everything was fresh from the garden.

Fried chicken, potatoes in white sauce, fresh corn, peas, tomatoes, and Mexican cornbread. I could hurt myself on that meal.

Fried calf liver with caramelized onions over hot grits. Corn cut fresh off the cob "fried" in a cast iron skillet with bacon grease. Paneed pounded beef cutlets with egg noodles covered in melted butter. Sunday dinner roast, rice, and gravy with home grown field peas and home grown corn as sides. Damn I miss my mama!

quote:

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roast, rice and gravy, and green beans

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And sweet corn

Fiskibollur with curry bechamel
Boiled potatoes with brown butter

There was 10 of us back then and when she fried chicken, about every two or three weeks she fried about 4 or 5 chickens that she cut herself-country cut with the wishbone as a ninth piece. Man they were good and we always had leftover cold chicken. She always said if she was going to make a mess she might as well cook a bunch.

She made beef stroganoff every year for my birthday and it's one of my favorite even today.

Not much of a baker, she bought most cakes and pies but she did make an incredible sour cream poundcake and we would slice Pontchatoula strawberries with homemade whipped cream on it.

Being one side of the family was from the Northeast she cooked a lot of leg of lamb with apples and English scones and I do that a lot myself. Not many people around here at that growing up when I did. Now it's more common.

But her best dish was a simple, classic roasted whole chicken she served with roasted onions, carrots and potatoes and a pan juice.

Those were just a limited few of her dinners. But what she really loved to make was sandwiches. She could build you a basic grilled cheese with good old American cheese on white bread just melted in the middle while the outside was crispy from the softened butter she spread on each side.

Or she could build you a turkey on sourdough with romaine lettuce, creole mustard and gruyere cheese.

She always said when she died she felt sure god would have her making sandwiches in heaven since she made so many while on earth. So I'm guessing right about now she's tapping her foot impatiently while looking at the calendar and wishing it was a bit later in May so that first batch of her vine ripened garden tomatoes could be picked. Then she could slice them onto white Bunny bread with Blue Plate Mayonnaise and salt and pepper, pour a glass of ice cold sweet tea and pronounce "spring has sprung."

I miss that old woman.

my mom's crawfish etoufee used to be tGOAT... then she and my sister became convinced that they should be dairy free and she subbed olive oil for the butter.... most significant bummer ever on that visit home.