The planner

My mother is one of those largely organized people, who goes about her life making and following plans with very little drama. My father, likely due to the nature of his work, has a love for solving dramatic problems. He is also a planner, but grows bored when things are too easy. I inherited some odd hybrid of their personalities. I love to make lists and plan, only because my lists and plans indicate exactly how long any given task can be procrastinated. Plans are carefully made to finish any given task approximately three minutes before it would be considered past due or too late.

I did manage to carry one planning love from my mothers house into the circus that is my own. I love weekly menu planning. Sitting around with a cup of coffee, a stack of cookbooks and back-issues of cooking magazines, and a Franklin Covey menu planner form, I can sit around planning weekly meals for hours on end.

One of the things that made it to my list this week was a summer salad recipe that one of my aunts sent years ago. It was begging to be made because it is one of my mom's favorites, managing to capture many of the essential summer flavors in one bowl. It will be included in my list again next week because I forgot to set some aside for my mother before handing the bowl over to my hungry family.

If you are inclined to plan, you may want to consider adding this to your next round of meals.

Chicken Feta Salad

4 chicken breasts, grilled and cubed
8 medium Roma tomatoes
1 lb penne pasta, cooked and cooled
1/2 cup Kalamata olives
3/4 cup feta cheese
1/2 cup fresh herbs (I usually use basil)
1 T fresh tarragon
2 cloves garlic

Dressing:
1/2 cup olive oil
Juice of 1 large lemon
salt & pepper

Boil pasta, cool and set aside. Quarter tomatoes, slice olives, chop herbs, crush garlic, and add to dressing. Toss everything together and refrigerate several hours.

Note: I usually add extra lemon juice and zest to the grilled chicken when I pull it from the grill.

Cooking my way back to childhood

I once read something in the newspaper about damage to the right side of one's brain causing a fixation on food, and immediately thought that I must have been dropped on my head as a child. Many of my favorite memories since childhood have been food based. From childhood vacations, I remember the Casey's Grand Opening where I bought 5 slurpees for a quarter half-way through the12 hour car trip (a bad idea for a car-sick prone child), and the Chocolate Decadence eaten at Lucia's when my aunts took me to lunch is remembered as vividly today as it was immediately after our lunch 20 years ago. Camping trips are remembered by the snacks that were in the cooler, and I loved hiking with my dad because it often included Snickers bars.

We learned early this summer that my mother, one of the greatest people I know, is terminally ill. I spent weeks focusing on how my mom must be feeling, the impact this will bring to my daughter (who loves my mom more than anyone else), and of course my father. Once I moved past the initial shock, and processing in the third person, I found it all coming back to food for me.

I remembered my fourth birthday, when my facsination with Mastaccioli was such that I insisted that to be the theme of my party. I remembered making my mother French Onion Soup when she returned from a work trip in California when I was fifteen and not usually pleasant to my poor mother. She was incredibly touched by the thought, delighted in the soup, and gently suggested that perhaps next time I should broil the soup in something other than her beloved Blue Willow China.

I had coffee with some of my oldest and dearest friends today, with whom I have baked and eaten many meals since they brought me cobbler when I was miserable and pregnant with my first child. I wanted to bring something wonderful, and found myself thinking my way through my mother's recipe box (a favorite childhood activity), and came upon an urgent need for Hip Padder Bars. This is a recipe I found online, since I didn't have immediate access to my mom's recipe box, but came pretty close:

Base
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 egg
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups oatmeal


Filling
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup chocolate chips
2 T. butter
1 tsp vanilla

Spread 2/3 of Base into the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan. Melt chocolate chips into sweetened condensed milk over a double boiler, and stir in butter and vanilla. Pour over Base in 13 x 9 pan. Drop remaining Base over the filling by spoonfuls, and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.