Sitting here thinking about Easter dinner reminded me of a “Mom memory”. Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m a couple recipes short of a good cook! Well I have a really good excuse. My Mom.

My Mom worked throughout my childhood. Dinners were very simple and consisted of stuff like hot dogs and beans, sometimes with canned sauerkraut, or Swanson’s TV dinners, or — well, that’s all that’s coming to mind. Wow. There had to be something else.

Holiday dinners, on the other hand, were something to marvel at. I remember one holiday in particular. (It wasn’t Easter, because that would have been ham.) My grandparents were visiting. They had traveled to California from Michigan. They only visited once. They were very old and smelled funny. Anyway, I digress!

Mom made her famous lasagne. I remember sitting at the kitchen counter watching her cook. Lasagne-making is an art you know, and it’s something to watch! A layer of noodles. A layer of sauce. A layer of cheese. A layer of noodles. A layer of sauce…. well you get it. For a nine-year-old, accustomed to TV dinners, this was fancy stuff.  Well, finally, she completed the masterpiece and slipped it into the oven. She made a salad and wrapped bread up in tin foil. (Now I KNEW it was a holiday!) And we waited. I set the table (again another sign that it was a holiday).

Finally, it was time! Mom checked the kitchen clock, picked up her hot pads and reached for the lasagne. As she pulled it out of the oven, something went very wrong. She lost her grasp and the whole thing fell to the floor. Upside down. I will never forget what happened next.

In one fluid motion, she leaned down and with one hand flipped the baking dish over, and with the other hand grabbed a cookie sheet, jammed it underneath the entire mess, scooped it up, and flopped it all back down into the baking dish, placed the dish on the top of the stove, gave it a few pats — and turned to me and said:

NOT ONE WORD!