I Would Like to Take This Opportunity to Thank My Mom

The likelihood that I'll ever win an Oscar and be able to say 'Thank you Mom' is negligible at best, and even if I were to have Mr. Oscar in hand, the band would start playing really loudly before I got through even a small percentage of the things I would want to thank my mother for.

So, instead, I will employ the wonderful world of blogging to send thank-yous to my mother. Her name is Terry. She's fabulous. I am not at all biased in my judgement. There are more than a google (look it up, it's a number) things that I could thank my mother for, but since the very loose constructs of this blog concern things related to food, I'll attempt hold back on all the non-food related thank-yous. Note the word 'attempt'.

Dear Mom, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the following childhood experiences:

1. Never feeding me a TV dinner
2. Taking me strawberry and raspberry picking
3. Asking me to help you in the kitchen
4. Making dinner every night
   
5. Making sure we sat down to dinner as a family every night
   
6. Serving vegetables at every dinner
7. Making dessert a very occassional treat
8. Never using canned corn or other canned vegetables and fruits
9. Trying to feed us new/different foods, even if that cornflake casserole didn't get the thumbs up!
10. Planting a vegetable garden
11. Teaching me how to bake
    
12. Making Christmas baking a tradition that I still treasure
13. Not bringing sugar cereals into the house
14. Letting me eat candy and chocolate, but making sure the house was not filled with sweets
15. Taking me to the grocery store with you
16. Not bringing your daughters up on television, but rather on books and imagination and the outdoors
17. Making me a birthday meal every year...up to and including my 29th!!
18. Packing my lunches, even though I thought I wanted cafeteria meals like pizza and fries
19. Not having a bathroom scale
    
20. Making delicious date squares
21. Making homemade yogurt and bean sprouts
22. Letting me order whatever I wanted when we ate out - even when I went through that hamburger phase
23. Never buying white bread
24. Making homemade jam

The list could go on and on, but in the interests of keeping this post to a respectable length, I'll now skip ahead....

I would also like to thank you for the following:

1. Answering my many, many questions about cooking, food safety, etc. since I've been living away from home. I think I have averaged about two calls per month, possibly more. And you've always had an answer
2. Holding food in balance - neither revering it to the point that it could become, literally, all-consuming nor dismissing it as something that could be nuked in two minute
3. Teaching me almost everything I know about baking, most of what I know about cooking and a good chunk of what I know about food

Finally, Mom, thank you for being a wonderful cook and showing me that making a meal truly is a labour of love.