Food Friday: Mother’s Day Ideas for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

I am going to be out of town on Mother’s Day, so I am telling my children right now that the pressure is off. Relax. I don’t get home until after ten on Sunday night. Text me, though.

Mr. Friday and I are trying to get organized to move from a house where we have lived for more than twenty years. I opened a box this week, full of earnestly scribbled cards and Valentines, covered with crayon flowers, boats, Pokémon monsters, and abstract expressionistic family portraits. Some were obviously done as assignments with guidelines and too much adult assistance in pre-school and elementary school. And others are purely homemade and super sweet, as well as being creatively misspelled. Ah, sentimental fool that I am, they all went back into the box, and the box is moving with us.

All you other children: get cracking! Prepare a meal, cut some flowers, draw a picture, make a card, and be daringly retro and pick up the phone!

Breakfast: French Toast

We always have day old French bread (in fact we have a collection of French bread in the freezer) and it always seems a sin and a shame to pitch it, so this is a delightful and economical way to be frugal consumers. And Mr. Friday loves the added kick of the rum on an otherwise uneventful Sunday morning…

1 cup milk
1 pinch salt
3 brown eggs
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 generous dollop rum
1 tablespoon brown sugar
8 1/2-inch slices day old French bread

Whisk milk, salt, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract, rum and sugar until smooth. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium heat. Soak bread slices in mixture until saturated. Cook bread on each side for a couple of minutes, until golden brown. Serve with maple syrup and powdered sugar.

Lunch : BLTs – because they are perfect food.

Bacon improves everything it touches. One of my many reasons for embracing the British is because of their all-consuming love for bacon. The bacon butty is practically a national treasure. Think of a mound of bacon piled on a soft roll. I draw the line at HP sauce, but then I also restrict the application of mayonnaise or butter. I think a bacon sandwich is best enjoyed practically naked. There is quite enough fat without an additional schmear of butter. I like a good bacon sandwich on rye toast. Which is also how I like my BLTs. And my grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. And my club sandwiches. Imagine how desolate a thin, unadorned grilled cheese sandwich is. But add some festive bacon and you can toss confetti and start a party!

Here are some more sandwich ideas: https://chestertownspy.org/2013/08/30/food-friday-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year/

Dinner: Easy Peasy Roasted Chicken

Start with a 3-pound bird and clear out the cavities. Shake salt and pepper over the chicken, pretend to be Hermione Granger, whispering a magic spell and hoping for the best.

Preheat the oven to 325° F, then put the chicken on top of a vertical non-stick chicken roaster, or plunk it down in a roasting pan. Cook for about 20 minutes a pound. Voila. Add some rice and a lively green salad, and since it’s Mother’s Day, up the wine ante a little bit. Go for some Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.

https://chestertownspy.org/2013/01/24/food-friday-weekend-chicken/

Time Spent Together in the Kitchen Spaghetti Sauce

This will thrill your mother – watching you cook her a vat of spaghetti sauce. Turn the tables and make an elaborate, messy, memorable meal. First, pour her a glass of wine.

https://chestertownspy.org/2013/06/14/food-friday-the-luxury-of-homemade-spaghetti-sauce/

Dessert: Ours to Share: Secret Family Recipe Brownies

My mother never used cake mixes; they offended her New England sensibilities. She would never have considered buying Ghiradelli Double Chocolate Brownie Mix, although I can assure you, it is a very fine product; many a box has migrated through our kitchen. When I was growing up my mother baked brownies made from scratch, and they were equally delish. They were made according to my grandmother’s secret family recipe, written down on a faded and thumb-printed, sticky index card. It was a family treasure, kept in a little wooden box in the pantry. A secret family recipe? Ha! Like most family secrets this was life-altering in its cunning and simple deceit – our Secret Family Recipe was pretty much verbatim the recipe on the back of the Baker’s Secret Chocolate box! Except that we left out the nuts.

Helen Foley’s Secret Family Brownie Recipe

4 squares Baker’s unsweetened chocolate
3/4 cup butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
Heat oven to 350°F.
Line a 9” x 9” pan with parchment paper.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out with fudge-y crumbs. (Do not over bake.) Cool completely.

Here are a kazillion recipes from those clever folks at Food52:
https://food52.com/recipes/mothers-day

“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”
― Robert A. Heinlein