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B Mom could take a little hamburger, a few potatoes and some canned tomatoes and whip up a feast that would make BobbyFlay weep. And the things she could do with a chicken . . . well, it makes mymouth water to think about it. Her homemade chili sauce was second to none. Herbottled peaches were better than candy. And I once offered to make my sisterKathy’s bed for a week if she would give me the last slice of toast made withMom’s homemade bread. Kathy wouldn’t go for it. She preferred toeat the toast – infuriatingly slowly – in front of me, watching me suffer witheach exquisite bite. If memory serves, that was the same day I tried to killKathy with a crutch. If I had succeeded, all we would have had to do was givethe judge a taste of Mom’s homemade bread and jam, and he would have ruled iton my side.But put a beef steak in her skillet, and sheturned into the anti-cook. She could take the finest, most perfectly marbledribeye and turn it into a hunk of protein with the flavor and texture of shoeleather. Of course, it wasn’t intentional. Several months later my big brother Bud tookme out for lunch and ordered steaks for both of us. I wasn’t thrilled, butsince he was paying I figured I could choke down a few bites. When the waitressserved our steaks, I was surprised at how good they smelled. Mom’s steaks neversmelled like that. The first bite was a char-broiled epiphany, a revelation ofsizzling flavor. Suddenly I understood why others spoke of steak fondly. Idevoured my steak greedily, and stole a bite of Bud’s when he took a secondtrip to the salad bar. “You know,” I said to Bud, patting my stomachcontentedly. “I used to think Mom was a great cook. But it’s hard to believeher steaks come from the same animal as these steaks.”“Mom is a great cook,” Bud said. “But thinkabout it. She grew up during the Great Depression. That’s when she learned tocook. How often do you think they had steak?”
