My Mom The Culinary Rebel

Tonight the Curtis family and my dad had a lovely meal prepared by my dear sweet mother (a woman who can never seem to please all the critics). Now, realistically, the only person (from my family) even remotely qualified to critique another persons cooking is my sister who graduated from the Cordon Bleu Culinary School. Everyone else in the family really ought not to complain--but we just can't do it. We just can't seem to keep our big mouths shut. We are either stuffing our faces with the food she has so graciously prepared or pouring out complaints regarding the before mentioned meals.
The complaints usually target an inconsistency in the recipe, but sometimes they reach as far as the temperature of the food. Tonight my dad actually said, when my mom asked for feedback, "It's not hot enough". Oh Lord. Really dad? You had to go there? Stick your damn plate in the micro and keep your big mouth shut. But I probably shouldn't talk--I wasn't really any better when I suggested that the mysterious sweet tomatoey flavor (chili sauce) seemed "unusual" which of course translates into "Mom, don't do THAT again". Really though, you have to ask, what gives us the right to complain about food we haven't either bought from a restaurant or prepared ourselves? I can't answer this. I really don't know. As my mom would say "I haven't the "foggiest".
Now, when it comes to food, my mom is a creature of habit. But don't let that fool you--she has a wild streak of reckless abandon that only comes out in her cooking. In fact, this may be the origin of many of the complaints. See, she doesn't love to cook but she does love to take requests, (she's a people pleaser). In fact "What to do you want me to make for dinner?" are words I have heard come out of my mother's mouth many, many times. Now the right answer to this question is of course the name of the dish you want to eat. However, a more appropriate answer might be "Mom try to make the same thing you made LAST TIME you made...(insert name of favorite food). Further more, prepare it in the same way, with the same ingredients as the last time you made it". You see, here in lies the REAL problem. My mom, the same woman who can give an identical answer, verbatim, to the same question asked 10 years after the fact--could not follow a recipe if her life depended on it.
Take for example, the potato soup. Everyone in the Callahan family and now everyone in the newly formed 2nd generation Curtis family LOVES my moms potato soup. It's creamy, it's potatoey, it's buttery and delicious. That being said--occasionally some rogue ingredient (like whole peppercorns) somehow manages to end up infiltrating a particular "batch". I don't know how many times I have heard her say, in astonishment, "Well...LAST time I made this it was delicious. For some reason this batch just doesn't have the same flavor". Meanwhile, Ryan is ripe with the answer to that burning question as he picks the whole peppercorns out of his teeth.
Now, I know that some times people like to "experiment" with different ingredients, but most of the time they are working off a basic recipe. My mom does not understand this concept. I think she sees the recipe card more like a beacon of hope guiding her ship out of rough waters. She uses it as her own personal bookmark, so as to not lose her place in her "process".
She will frequently offer to make a dish you have lavished praise upon in the past, only this time you are not sure she heard you right. Goulash? I though I said chili. I swear, every time she makes short ribs (one of my favorite dishes) she cannot recreate the same dish she served the last time she made short ribs. It's a pretty basic recipe: meat, potatoes, carrots, onions and gravy. However, every time she makes it I'll be damned if she can't find some ingredient she didn't use the last time she made short ribs. I might ask "What is this? A potato, an onion, a rogue hot pepper?" Her answer "No. A parsnip". What the hell is a parsnip? Next time, I might ask "Does this batch have a sweeter flavor then last time?" to which she would respond "Yes. I added stewed tomatoes, that makes it sweeter." No, that makes it more like goulash Mom. For some reason she can relay a recipe exactly the way you remember it being prepared--BY HER--in the past, she just can't follow it herself.
So, this behavior begs the question why can't she prepare food following the directions from her very own recipe? Maybe she feels confined by the restraints of the recipe, maybe she feels free when she enters the kitchen, maybe she morphs from ordinary mom to chef extraordinaire--she sees food in it's raw state and can visualize it's transformation from mundane edibles to culinary masterpiece, or maybe, simply put, she is a maverick, a rebel, a culinary James Dean. Who knows. Who really cares. All I know is, at dinner time, she keeps us guessing-and-if she didn't do this, time and time again, when it comes to cooking what would we do for "comedic material"? XOXO. Thanks for all those meals you made. Love you Mom.