My Mother, God rest her soul, was truly the antithesis of a cook. The arch nemesis of a chef. The prototypical, should never have have had 5 children, kind of cook.

But, being Irish Catholic, she just buried her head in the sand, and faked it.

My father was enormously successful when I was young and my mother was given the opportunity to design not only a complete remodel of our tiny little house, but she included a Martha Stewart inspired kitchen for herself (30 years before Martha appeared).

Mind you, this was 1968:

There was a six burner gas restaurant range, with a double broiler under a 2 1/2′ by 2 1/2′ gridle, and two ovens. We had a restaurant style range hood above it, and a 2 drawer warming oven next door.

Not only could we fit a 12 foot picnic table inside the kitchen (Thanksgiving.. Irish Catholic.. The ‘younger’ kids table) but we also had a built in Secretariat, a desk if you will, with cabinets and drawers, and a sitting area. This all led into a ‘formal dining room’ with dark wood panelled walls, and a fancy crystal chandelier (which later caught on fire, but that’s another story).

In my Mother’s defense she was pretty darned good with baked lasagna, spaghetti, cioppino, corned beef and cabbage, steak-potatoes-and-artichokes, and prune cake… and of those, she took every recipe to her grave like a an unexpected death buries a theif with his treasure.

Oh, and she was good at meatloaf, which, by ally-ally-all-come free, simply cannot be taken to the grave. Meatloaf is Meatloaf.

She was horrible at baking (except Prune Cake, also buried with her… Not the actual cake, just the recipe) and when told upon arrival from school that she had made cookies, we would simply ask ‘why?’.

My father used to work fairly late some evenings (read; stop at the bar), and I remember this one night in particular. I was probably five years old… before the ‘new kitchen that didn’t help’ was built, and my mother had made ‘Eggplant Parmesan’. Good for her for experimenting, but it was so liquified she had to serve it in. a. bowl. on. top. of. a. plate.

Now that I think about it, I have no idea why the bowl was on a plate, but it served the oldest and wisest brother well.

I can hear us right now. All whining and complaining… (I mean it… this dish was truly awful), but she said we had to clean our plate before leaving the table.

Suddenly, and without warning, my oldest brother was done with his meal. With a Ta-Da!… and a Vegas dealer flip of his hands, he pulled his shirt sleeves up past his wrists and was gone!

Are you kidding me? How in the hell did he do that? How in the hell did he stomach that?

How in the hell did he get rid of that?

We had a dog, and a cat, and neither were in sight. Every other sibling (except me - I was always the hold-out) was gaggingly choking this stuff down. Me? I would sit there for hours… I was the kind of kid that would stay at the dinner table until bedtime. in protest. refusal. or plain lack of hunger. Perhaps I just knew at an early age that the food really, truly, was just plain bad. Who knows?

Slowly but surely, every kid ate a sufficient amount to be excused except me.

As children we each had our weekly chores, and Brian was assigned to dishes that week. Dishes involved the whole gamut… from clearing the table, to cleaning and drying (no dishwasher in the kitchen before the ‘kitchen that didn’t help’ was built), and then you even had to put the dishes away. Thanksgiving was the hell week of dishes.

So Brian begins grabbing bowls, and a few other dishes. He grabs Johns bowl, the brother who finished first, and the plate on the bottom is stuck to it… comes up with it. He just shrugs and takes everything into the kitchen. A couple of seconds later I can hear a pause in the dishwashing noise. He stops washing. Without a sound, I can hear a question. It’s like a Scooby Doo moment…

Heeee-ruh?

Brian had to forcibly separate the bowl from the plate. John had secretly slid all of the eggplant under the bowl. Not only had he hid his food, but he had pressed it down sooo hard that the liquid got extinguished into his napkin, and formed a vaccuum effect that held the bowl and the plate together. The parmesan cheese was just additional glue that held it all together.

Any cooking skills I have were acquired through survival instinct. The mother of invention rather than from my Mother.