Eat, Darling, Eat 

Some of what Mom prepared for holidays dated back to an older generation whose journey to America was motivated by an escape from the Czar.

Within a classic stay-at-home, post-WWII mom was a free-spirit, as wacky as the actresses she adored: Lucille Ball, Judy Holliday, and Shirley MacLaine.

All married people fight—that was the message from a deeply unsatisfied mother. But a hand-cranked ice cream maker introduced some family fun.

The sky might fall down if Mom (now 92 years young) stopped cooking, all through immigration from Sri Lanka, to Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.

A young daughter was anxious to learn what she thought it meant to be female. When her mother refused to share kitchen wisdom, it felt like rejection.

When a difficult mother was facing declining health alone, her daughter commenced a rigorous project of cooking for her mother’s freezer.

Mom's sense of order and pragmatism guided most everything in her life, and taught her daughter much of what she knows about cooking and entertaining.

Mom kept her rings on while baking her famous buttery cakes—and beat the batter with a spoon, pretending it was her husband.