Horsefeathers

It's Sunday afternoon, and there's a chill in the air.

It's the kind of day where you dig through the back corners of your closet for sweaters, the kind of day where you leave your socks on. The morning's coffee is held close in both hands, savored for it's warmth.

I woke up this morning knowing I had nothing to do. Nowhere to be. But somehow that feeling is different on a Sunday. Almost comforting. Welcome.

I walked up the street, grabbed a Sunday paper, brewed a pot of coffee - and began pecking through the want ads. I suppose it would have been easier, cheaper to just dig online - but lately that seems to be all I do anymore.

Besides, this is a Sunday paper.

The Sunday paper is different. The Sunday paper you dig through. You browse. It has textures, color, variance. Toilet paper coupons that feel different than the inserts advertising the customized checkbooks. The travel sections, the funnies.. the things you don't really read as much as you kinda glance over. It's more of a ritual than anything else -- but then again, that's what's kinda nice about it.

Where did I pick up that habit?

There's no time limit on browsing the Sunday paper, only the sense that the time that goes by isn't really being wasted. But it is a big paper, and time does tick away. In fact, it's only as I'm folding the pages back up so I can throw them away (which is unnecesary, but somehow seems important) that I realize just how close to noon it's become. There's a slate of football games coming on TV in about an hour that I'll probably watch, with pregame shows before that.

Just enough time to whip up some lunch.

There's nothing promising in the cupboard for a meal, but there's plenty of little things that can be put together. Maybe a chowder, or some sort of casserole. Chilly days are perfect for things like that.

You know when you get into the mood for something, and it just doesn't want to let go? After a while it was like the taste was already on my tongue, like I'd already cooked the meal. When it gets like that, you almost have to see it through. And so what started as a hunt for food becomes a search for something else.

It's a soup tin. A box cannister. The kind of thing you get for christmas from coworkers that don't really have any idea what you like. Normally you throw those things away once the sugar cookies or whatever are gone. But this one I kept, started putting things into. Recipie cards, mostly.

This was back in the days when I first lived on my own, first started cooking for myself. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I went to the best source I had at the time -- My Mother.

For as long as I could ever remember, my mother collected recipie cards. They'd come from everywhere. Magazines, the inside of soupcan labels, the backs of cereal boxes. She'd call 1-800 numbers to order recipie sets off tv commercials. Every now and then my brother and I would come home from school to find her experimenting like some mad scientist in the kitchen, buzzing from pot to pot before moving back to the counter to check her progress against some 3x5 notecard or something that she'd get from one of the nurses she worked with.

Not every meal turned out great, but I always loved the fact that she was willing to try things out. Maybe that's why I always loved it when letters she would send me at college would come with little recipie cards inside. Not the originals of course -- but duplicates, carefully written in the distinctive cursive script that was hers and hers alone.

The cursive script that I'm searching for now.

The funny thing about it though is that as I've developed my own skills as a cook, I've sorta moved away from the lessons that she taught me. For better or for worse, my mother did most of her family cooking during the mid to late 70's - a period not really noted for it's culinary excellence. I loved the things she made, but there is one fact that simply can't be denied.

My mother was an absolute master in the fine art of Honky Cuisine.

Despite being raised in the south with taste for things like collard greens, black-eyed peas, and boiled peanuts - my mother somehow came to embrace many of the cooking practices of the midwest. All she really needed to work her magic was a casserole dish and a can of cream of mushroom soup. From there it was a simple matter of adding something from one of the four basic white people food groups (egg noodles, miracle whip, cheez whiz, nilla wafers)-- and a meal was born.

I swear, she was like MacGuyver sometimes -- Corn flakes, chili powder, marshmallows, raisins.. you never knew what you were gonna get (well, except for the guaranteed spoonful of either peas, green beans, or corn). It may not have been the healthiest choices she could have made, but even so -- some of those dishes were really friggin' good.

Especially on a cold November day.

..Like this one.

It's been six months since she died. She'd been sick for a while, which maybe made it easier for me to take at first. But then there are the moments like this. The moments when you feel your heart sink while staring at the faded cursive handwriting on an old notecard. Moments when what you really want more than anything else in the world isn't the meal itself, but for someone to cook it

One more time.

[Listening to: Robin Trower, "Bridge of Sighs"]