A DeLorean, Shaped Like a Chocolate Biscuit

I am grateful for the sharpness of sense memory, especially these days when the memory in my head is imperfect and full of holes. Our senses have a remarkable ability to shut down all the life around us and transport us, with great clarity, to a moment in our pasts.

There are certain smells that, for me, trigger vivid memories of a particular event or person, no matter how often I encounter those scents in other situations. A particular flowery lotion smell sends me back to sophomore year three-act play, and the smell of fresh-cut wood always reminds me of my father. Sounds work much the same way, especially in the form of songs.

Of all the senses that evoke memory, however, I think taste is by far the most powerful. Food memory is perhaps responsible, partly, for why we love or hate certain foods, or why certain foods are coated in thick veneers of our pasts.

Whenever I eat Spaghetti-O's (which is not that often, but I am a mom, so it does happen), I am suddenly in my grandma's dining room, swinging my five-year-old legs that do not touch the floor and admiring my collection of sparkly rocks. Whenever I eat pasta that has a spicy tomato cream sauce, I am back in my St. Paul apartment, leaning against the counter and talking to Chef Matt, who has just shown up with leftovers after a late cooking shift.

One of my favorite food memories came crashing back at me this weekend, with my parents' return home from Australia. When I was 20, I spent five months in Sydney and came to love, among many other things, an Australian chocolate biscuit called a Tim-Tam. At first glance, they are nothing special: crunchy cookies sandwiching chocolate frosting and coated in chocolate. But try one, and I guarantee you that your outlook on the world of chocolate biscuits will be transformed. Bite each end off and suck coffee through it like a straw, and your outlook on all sweets will never be the same.

Up until recently, you could not get anything like a Tim-Tam in the United States. I have had occasion to have a few since I was in Sydney, and every experience was the same. I was back at the University of Sydney, drinking strong Australian beer and skipping class to soak up a beach, always toting a Tim-Tam or the lingering taste of one on my tongue.

The ghost of Sydney is back upon me now, as I savor Tim-Tams that my parents brought from Down Under. I could not be farther from that time and place. But luckily, food memory does not easily die. For the briefest of instances, I am not a pregnant mother of three staring out the window at a frozen lake. I am a young exchange student with nothing much to think about except a snorkel on the Reef.

Thank goodness for those food memories. I would never exchange the life I have now for the life I was living then, but it certainly does not hurt to call that life up every once in a while with a chocolate biscuit or two.

You Ruined my Day, Applesauce Muffins

Cooking disasters are just part of the deal. You cannot do wonderful things with food without sometimes doing disastrous things with food, and it is important to our sense of accomplishment as cooks (amateur or professional) to screw up a bit sometimes.

Unless you are me, and then you screw up a lot of the time. Nothing I cook ever looks pretty enough to eat, and sometimes only marginally tastes good. I brown scrambled eggs, never cut the onions small enough, and occasionally bake things that are only easy to chew if they are toasted and doused with butter. I am never going to be a Pinterest phenomenon.

Usually it does not bother me much. My kids do not care what the food looks like and Chef Matt will eat just about anything I make. But sometimes a cooking disaster explodes in your face. And other times it explodes in your face when you are already having a rotten day, and suddenly you are sulking in a corner, ignoring everyone and wishing you could have a stiff drink.

Yesterday was not a good day. The main floor bathroom flooded, dripping through the floor and soaking the basement carpet. As I stewed over that, and another wrong cable bill, I decided to channel my anger into efficient domesticity and use precious afternoon nap time to cook some things for the week. In particular, I thought I would be Fun Mommy and bake a batch of applesauce muffins.

My daughter insisted on helping, which generally means that she eats the sugar and does not actually help much. Sure enough, half of the applesauce ended up on the cookbook and not one drop of the egg made it into the bowl. But the disaster part came at my hands, and I do not have the excuse of being five.

As I lifted the muffin tin to put it into the high wall oven, the tin hit the oven door, and in ridiculous slow motion, tumbled to the floor, flinging muffin batter in all directions. I gazed at it stupidly for a minute. It was a spectacular, gloppy mess, seeping between floorboards and coating our kitchen rug that I am pretty sure is unwashable. For one wild second, I wondered if it would be possible to just scoop it back into the tins. I had just cleaned the floors; no one would actually know.

Then I just lost it completely, spitting out a string of profanity that I am sure startled my poor daughter and scandalized the neighbors. I scraped muffin batter off the floor and walls, furious at the waste and the mess, and started all over again. I was determined not to let applesauce muffins get the better of me.

I finally baked a batch and calmed down a bit. I reasoned with myself that I still managed to make homemade muffins for my kids. The disaster was overcome (except for the blasted rug) and I would stand to bake another day.

But in the end, the muffins did get the better of me: for all that, they do not even remotely taste good.

Champagne, Leftovers and the Unknown New Year

I think a lot of people are cynical about New Year's. The first day of a new year is truly just another sunrise and sunset, and the night before can be nothing more than an agony of ridiculous cover charges and hangovers-to-be.

But it just might be my favorite holiday. Unlike most holidays, it is a two-day affair: the Eve, in which we remember the year that has gone, and the Day, in which we look with hope at the year to come.

I love, too, that it is that perfect mixture of all that is ordinary about our lives and those few unique moments that keep our lives interesting. We still have to fix meals, do laundry and buy groceries, but we get to wear sparkly clothes, drink champagne and stay home from work.

These last few days, as we finished up 2012 and coasted into 2013, I felt keenly the blend of regular and unusual in our house. Around the table, the last three days have felt like a cross-section of how we eat at our house: one-third mommy-scrambling to prepare something with leftovers, imperceptible vegetables and a gush of sauce; one-third patronage at Chef Matt's restaurant, shoveling lovely food while vainly trying to sedate screaming children; and one-third Matt-at-home concoction, wondering why we can't eat venison au jus and rutabaga-carrot mash more often.

Eating these three wildly different meals were my typical little eaters: a five-year-old who cannot eat a meal in less than 45 minutes, a three-year-old who can be convinced to eat anything provided it comes with ketchup, and a one-year-old who can sniff out a vegetable even when it has been pureed and baked in a brownie.

All of that smacks of the everyday in our house. But this New Year's was sprinkled with all those little things that make the ordinary gleam, just a little bit. We were eating leftover slop and venison chops in our new house. Matt worked a 14-hour day on the Eve, but was home all day with us on the Day, a rare family day. I skipped the champagne and went to bed at nine-thirty, courtesy of Baby Number Four. I wore sparkly clothes and stayed home from work.

None of us knows what a new year will bring, in the form of out-of-the-ordinary. Is that not the amazing, and scary, thing about our brief time on this earth? Our lives generally just continue as usual, and we get tired of doing dishes and changing diapers. But every year, New Year's comes around to remind us that there are champagne glasses and new babies, too, and we can feel hopeful again.

In Which It All Pays Off

In December of 2007, my husband got a text from his boss, desperate for his help on a busy, short-staffed pre-Christmas day. In the restaurant business, during busy season, this is nothing unusual.

But on that snowy afternoon, we were on our first date in three months, a musical theater show that had been a much-anticipated anniversary gift. Chef Matt checked his phone at intermission, gave me a very anxious look, and we left without finishing the show. He went to work, and I cried on the couch after he left.

In the eight years we have been together, anxiety and frustration from moments just like this have never gotten the better of us, but I would be lying if I said it did not occasionally make me wish he was a banker. As uncharitable as it sounds, I found myself screaming in my head: "Please go find a cubicle!"

But in a kitchen-marriage, you have to be in it together on every level, or the restaurant world will eat you alive. And to me that has meant learning to love the new cuisine at whatever new restaurant he was at (I have come to love short ribs and flatbread, cilantro and plantains, fancy foams, game burgers, and Julia Child), finding a lot of last-minute daycare, and most difficult, embracing the unpredictability in a (usually) gracious manner.

Throughout it all, we have whispered about the freedom that would come when he was, one day, in charge at a restaurant. We were under no illusions about a cushy job as executive chef, working fewer and shorter hours, but with Matt at the helm, it would give us greater control of our destiny.

An executive chef title would not erase the long hours or the crazy schedule. But it would be his food, his vision, his management and his pride, and somehow, that might make all the rest a little bit easier.

So for eight years, through six restaurants, hundreds of cookbooks read, and a few heartbreaks, he has slowly inched forward. Yesterday, the door finally swung open and the light of Executive Chef poured in. And I cried again, but this time in relief and pride and joy.

I cannot say that we will never again have to leave a date halfway through, or that we will not power through weeks where we are awake in the same room for a total of four hours, but at least it will be on his terms, and when he comes home late, he will be bearing to-go boxes of his own vision.

Hello, My Name is Mommy

A teacher acquaintance was telling me recently about the Vietnam veterans who speak to her classes, and the vets say that when a soldier was wounded, no matter his age or rank, he would call for his mother.

So many of us, soldiers or not, are drawn to our mothers when we are sick, of body or of heart. From the very beginning, they are our everything; as we get older, we still know that our mothers will be there with a hug and a band-aid, and all will be well. No other person on Earth knows our histories like our mothers do, and that makes them, from the first moment to the last, our most effective, fierce, and comforting line of defense in a difficult world.

The mother mission statement is not so very complex, but the job description is miles long. It all boils down to one essential requirement, though: "Make sure that my child feels loved and secure." They know we will be there to kiss boo-boos, chase monsters, cool fevers, and tuck them back into bed, and we are their favorite person because of it.

Motherhood is a completeness that I did not understand until I joined the ranks. All that assurance of love and safety changes who you are, for in that instant when you go from being a woman to being a mother, you become, to that little person, forever and ever, no matter what, in every moment, without pause: Mommy. To them, there is no other identity.

And I will not lie, being someone's everything can be exhausting. But it is also triumphant. When your newborn baby cannot be comforted by others, and is beside himself with sadness, you can swoop in and lay his head on your chest, and it is like a spell has been adeptly cast over his red-faced, teary, hiccupping little self. You are Mommy, and you can fix anything.

The singular identity lives on far past babyhood. In ninth grade, my mother destroyed her favorite accessory so I could use it in a school project. I was touched, but I did not understand until recently the depth of that gesture. Mothers sacrifice every day, in small and enormous ways, without hesitation or need for payback, because they want us to feel loved and secure. My mother's little sacrifice told me that nothing, no material thing, was more important to her than me.

Remind your mother that she is your everything, even if you are grown-up and independent. We may not need her to chase away monsters anymore, but at one point, we needed her and she was there. And if you are a mother, look at your babies and remind yourself that when they lay down their little heads, they sleep well because they know that you are there. Your Mommy-completeness is their security blanket, and will be for long after the last time you ever tuck them into bed.

And the Award Goes To... Probably Not One of Us

Next week, the James Beard Foundation will crown as the top chefs in America those who have inspired with their culinary prowess and set a national standard for excellence. To our chagrin, Chef Matt was overlooked once again.

The Beard Award is a Pulitzer. It is prestigious and exclusive and practically a guarantee that your reservations will fill up for the next year. Minnesota has three winners of the Best Chef: Midwest award, and all three of them are incredibly gifted chefs. But to 99.9% of the chef population, all those other creative, tireless, obsessively dedicated cooks, the Beard is eternally elusive.

Not that I am an advocate of every little soccer player getting a trophy. Illustrious awards are illustrious for a reason, and the Beard winners have all done their time. But the shadows of the most influential American chefs are long and deep. Many of the "unsung heroes" of the profession will spend their careers firmly planted in those shadows.

The world of professional cooking is a serf-and-lord hierarchy, where the critics are brutal, the lifestyle is unforgiving, and the chances for advancement and overwhelming success are remote. Reality TV has made chef celebrity seem attainable, raising the hopes of poor, naive foodies everywhere.

People like my husband are part of an army of chefs who do precisely what they are meant to do: cook amazing food that wins no awards but makes people happy. As any musician knows, you cannot just string any old notes together and hope it makes a song. The same principle applies with food, and there are thousands of chefs across the country whose knowledge and talent produces nightly works of art, eliciting that dreamy look of pleasure from their patrons.

Although a Beard medal and the publicity that comes with it would certainly be a game-changer, I honestly think most chefs just like to cook and make people happy. I could be wrong. They could all be laboring in sweltering kitchens twelve hours a day, battling food cost and finicky guests, on the slimmest of slim chances that they will be nominated for the highest culinary honor. Somehow I think that the majority of them just love food, but ask me again when Matt gets his nomination letter.

A Farewell to a First House

Dear House,

You have probably noticed that we are leaving soon. I know that, in your 128 years, you have probably seen many families come and go, so we may be just another brief chapter in your long history. You have seen two world wars, the birth of automobiles and a man on the moon; our brief stay in your four walls is perhaps not as monumental, but I can promise you that it has been so important to us.

Moving in, May 2007. Five years and three kids to follow.

We arrived six months into a new marriage, expecting a baby, and looking with so much hope toward our future as a family. Three times we have walked out the front door and returned two days later with a baby. You have surrounded us as we learned to be parents, remembered how to be parents again, and juggled children who suddenly outnumbered us.

You have sheltered us from two feet of snow and 100-degree heat. You looked so lovely in Christmas lights, and probably laughed when our very first Christmas tree toppled over in the middle of the night. You sighed with contentment as we watched the neighborhood from the front porch swing.

We gave you a face lift, one project at a time over five years. As we pack up this last week, it makes us so proud to see your refinished floors, your gleaming kitchen, and your beautiful little yard, and know that we did our very best to make you into the home we always wanted.

And then, of course, were all the meals we ate within your walls. Three baptismal brunches, Sunday night football frozen pizzas, cook-outs with our friends, a handful of elegant suppers on our wedding china, and thousands of meals with our sweet kids, most of which ended up on the floor and in their hair. I learned to make pies in your kitchen, and ate leftovers upstairs while hiding from a mouse I saw downstairs.

If time is actually measured by memories and not days, we have lived a lifetime in these rooms. My heart aches when I think about our daughter's first steps in the kitchen, our son crawling in the new grass out back, and our baby's first "mama" yelled from his crib. We will be moving on to bigger rooms (with, no offense, more closet space), but those rooms will never be able to claim those milestones.

Please do not forget us. This last week will likely be a whirlwind of packing, kid-wrangling, and address-changing, and throughout it we will be both sad and hopeful. Remember that wherever we end up in life, you will always be our first home. We came in as two and are leaving as six, for in five years, you became one of the family.

Thank you, Little House. You are very dear to us.

Love, Your Family