It’s been over 11 years since I stepped into my mother’s kitchen back on Long Island, but it all came flooding back the other day when I pulled out her small, olive green metal recipe box.
Our kitchen was off the living room at the back of the first floor. Standing at the kitchen sink, you could look over the backyard, to the rusty basketball hoop on the garage roof and our baseball field just over the forsythia bushes. My mom called us from that spot countless times. I wish I had a picture of her standing watch at that window, but it’s probably best remembered in my mind.
Back in her prime, Joan Batura was your quintessential suburban homemaker, busily tending to the needs of her husband and five children. She had been a secretary to the president of the Equitable Life Insurance Company in New York City before motherhood but left office work for the rigors of domestic management when we arrived.
Despite all the challenges surrounding us these days as a nation, we need to leave time to break bread together and laugh with the people we love.
Now that’s a recipe my mother knew by heart.
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