Listen to Your Mother! And Make Lunch for Her on Mother's Day!

Before I forget, I wanted to show you how pretty my Spanish lavender is--it loves Vacaville! You could plant some Spanish lavender for your mother in her garden for Mother's Day!

[caption id="attachment_1730" align="alignright" width="155"] Trust me, lady--I know how you feel[/caption]

Moving on.  I had a bit of a hard day yesterday. No, in the scheme of things it wasn't tragic.  Well, maybe a little.  I was in a store and I got asked if I wanted the senior citizen discount.  I wasn't sure whether to punch the clerk in the head or cry. I did neither, but the whole episode certainly did provide fuel for thought.

I remember, when I was about 25, my mother told me that no matter how old you get, you never really feel very different inside.  That once you pass 30, you stop feeling like you are getting older.  That you don't feel any different than you did when you were about 30, even if you are, say, 48.  Sure, I know that I've aged on the outside, but inside?  I still feel pretty young. Now bear in mind my mother died at 66, so I can't vouch for how she would have felt at 83.  But it's true--I don't feel much different than when I was about 30, even though I am fast approaching 50. So I cannot tell you how dismayed I was when the clerk asked me about the senior citizen discount.  "What?? I'm not old!  How could you think I'm that old??" (No, I didn't say that--I just gasped a little and shook my head.)  The whole thing kind of laid me low.  A little reminder that hell yes,  I'm getting old and looking it.

I know it shouldn't matter, that every wrinkle and grey hair I have is a testament to the fact that, yes, I am much wiser now that I'm older (no, really, I am), a testament to the woman I have become, and to the life I've led, blah blah blah.  YOU get asked if you want the senior citizen discount and tell me how you feel about the life you've led and the woman you've become.

The age thing, on the whole, doesn't usually bother me that much--but that was before I knew I looked old enough for the senior citizen discount.  Holy crap!  Am I wasting away my years bemoaning my waxing weight and waning looks? Maybe that's what my mother was telling me, to appreciate whatever age you are, 'cause you're only going to keep getting older, no matter how you feel inside.

[caption id="attachment_1723" align="alignright" width="140"] Ava[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1722" align="alignleft" width="110"] Cyd[/caption]

My mother was very pretty--when she was young she looked a lot like a combination of  Cyd Charisse and Ava Gardner. The shape of Cyd's face, but with Ava's eyes. So even when she was older, she still had men (who were a bit older still) look at her, and that's what prompted our conversation.  We were out shopping one day and she was getting checked out by a man, and she said that you never stop enjoying that feeling of being noticed and appreciated. It was a little gift, really, to pass this knowledge on to me, to remember that the pretty girl is always inside the aging woman.

So here's a few more of her tidbits:

1.  Stay out of the sun (can't tell you how much I wish I'd listened to that one).

2.  Stop wishing your life away ( I was always wishing for things to be different than they were).

3.  You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (all the champagne and chandeliers in the world won't help--trashy is still trashy).

4.  Pay yourself first (I still have a hard time with this one--keep forgetting to save money).

5. Children (and pets, too, actually!) come to live with you.

6.  Put on a happy face.

I feel completely confident that your own mother has or had little sayings that crop up regularly, and that you still apply to your life.  So be good!  Be nice to her!  Mother's Day is coming, so make her a nice lunch.  You could start with the Mother's Day Punch I mentioned last year about this time, and then move on to this easy and very make-aheadable lunch. Oven-fried chicken, tortellini salad, followed by chocolate dipped strawberries?  Delightful.

Oven Fried Chicken with Tortellini Salad

The Chicken:

Water

3 Tbl. salt

8 to 10 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs

2 Tbl. butter

1/2 cup flour

1 Tsp. coarsely ground black pepper

About 6 to 8 hours before you plan to cook the chicken, place the chicken in a large bowl. Toss in the 2 Tbl. salt and fill bowl with water, completely covering the chicken. Cover bowl with plastic wrap (or you could use a giant Tupperware, if you were so inclined) and place in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Remove the chicken from the bowl, and dry it well (I put paper towels on a baking sheet, put the chicken on the paper towels, and then dab chicken with more paper towels--it must be dry!). Put the butter in a large roasting pan and put the pan in the oven for a few minutes while it preheats--don't forget it, though, or it will burn.  Put the timer on if you need to.  Remove the pan when the butter is melted.  Put the flour, remaining 1 Tbl. salt, and the black pepper in a plastic bag.  Add the chicken to the bag, a piece or two at a time, and shake to coat the pieces well with flour.  Shake the excess flour off well. Lay each piece, skin side down, in the butter in the roasting pan. Return the pan to the oven, and cook for 40 minutes.  Turn the pieces over and cook for 20 more minutes.  Remove chicken from pan and drain on paper towels momentarily, then on a rack set over a baking sheet.  Serves 4 - 5

The Tortellini:

9 oz. fresh or frozen cheese tortellini

2 tomatoes, deglopped and chopped

1/2 cup thin slivers of red onion

1/2 cup thin slivers of red (or yellow or orange) bell pepper

1/2 cup small black olives, halved

2 Tbl. chopped Italian parsley

1/3 cup olive oil

3 Tbl. red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

1 clove garlic, crushed

Cook tortellini according to package directions.  Drain and rinse with cool water.  Place tortellini in a bowl, then add onion, bell pepper, olives and parsley.  In food processor combine oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and garlic and whiz to emulsify.  Pour dressing over the salad and let stand about 30 minutes before serving, stirring occasionally.  Serves 4

The Strawberries:

You know how to do this--dip strawberries in melted chocolate!

A Mother's Day Punch

"Punch" the drink, not "punch" the physical violence.  That wouldn't be a very good Mother's Day.  But "punch" the drink makes for a very nice Mother's Day (or any other time you are having company for brunch or lunch).  This extremely quaffable libation  is not expensive, it is delicious, and it'll keep both your minimal-drinker friends (and mothers) happy and your wino-in-training friends (and mothers) happy. It works well for a brunch or a lunch, which is perfect since you don't hear a lot about Mother's Day dinners (probably because Mom's usually back on duty by dinnertime).  The fruit juice seems to eliminate the headache that can come with drinking early in the day,  and you can feel slightly virtuous because it is, after all, fruit juice.  And you can feel stylish, too, because punch seems to be turning up more and more as a cost-effective, but still delicious, way to get a large group of people liquored up (and of course I mean that in the most genteel way).

Confession:  this is not a picture of my actual punch (even though it looks just like it).  I didn't happen to have any photos of punch lying around, and making a batch of punch just for a photo shoot seemed rather wasteful.  And if I had made it I'd have felt compelled to drink it, and...well, no good could have come of that situation. I mean, it's Tuesday.  Morning.   So I cribbed this picture off the internet.  Mea culpa.

Here's an interesting tidbit:  the word "punch" is from the Indian (or Urdu? I can't remember) word for "five," and a traditional punch always had five ingredients (and now you can see why a "punch" in the nose is called that--Good Lord, more physical violence!).

On to the task at hand.

First of all, a day or two before you are serving the punch, make an ice block.  I like to slice up a lemon and/or an orange (it looks prettiest with both, but use whatever you have), and then place the fruit in a small container ( a square 4-cup Gladware is perfect for the size of my punch bowl).  Put lots of fruit in--you want it to look like a block of frozen fruit, not like an iceberg adrift in your punch bowl.  Then fill the container with water. Place it in the freezer.  After about two hours, push the fruit down into the slushy water (but if the water isn't "thick" enough yet, come back in a little while) so that there is fruit throughout the block of ice, not just floating at the top.  Freeze at least overnight.

Brunch/Lunch Punch

1 (6 oz.) can frozen lemonade concentrate

32 oz. pineapple-orange juice  (I buy a half-gallon of Dole, in the carton, and just use half)

1 bottle well-chilled dry California white wine

1 bottle well-chilled brut California sparkling wine

Mix lemonade concentrate and pineapple-orange juice in punch bowl.  Add bottle of white wine. I usually use an inexpensive (but certainly not rot-gut) sauvignon blanc. (I specified California because hey--we live less than an hour away from one of the world's greatest wine producing regions, and if that's not being a locavore, I don't know what is).  Add ice block. Gently pour bottle of sparkling wine down the side (the inside--do I have to say that?) of the punch bowl (helps minimize carbonation loss) and serve immediately.

Feel free to top up the punch bowl with more champagne and/or more pineapple-orange juice as  it gets drunk. I can't tell you exactly how much this will serve, due to whether you use those funny little cups that come with the punch bowl, or some heftier, more, uh, thirst-quenching-size glasses.  At my house recently,  seven  people (with large glasses, not the little cups) were kept amply hydrated for the afternoon with these amounts.