photo by Matt Cornelius
MY DRIFT COLUMN BY PATSY MORRI SS
What would Forrest Gump say?
I always think about my mother when I make chocolate chip cookies. It’s not because she especially loved chocolate chip cookies, or because hers were particularly delicious. No, preparing chocolate chip cookies reminds me of my mother because it was the source of one of her “motherisms.” You know what a motherism is. A motherism is something you accepted as truth early in your life because your mother always said it. Later, when you became an adult, you either adopted it as your own truth or rejected it in favor of a belief that better suited your lifestyle. The quirky thing about motherisms though, is whether you embrace them or cast them aside, they never go away. I put knives in the dishwasher every single day, but even as I do it, I hear my mother saying I shouldn’t because the heat of the dishwasher will eventually melt the glue and the
handles will fall apart. It’s a motherism I’ve chosen to ignore, but nevertheless, it will always be there. My mother’s axiom about chocolate chip cookies was simply this: You should only put half of a bag of chocolate chips in your cookie dough. A whole bag, she said, resulted in cookies with too many chocolate chips. Too many chocolate chips? How can there be too many chocolate chips? I’m not really very good in the kitchen, but there are some who consider my chocolate chip cookies to be pretty fabulous. Once I was out from under my mother’s roof, I took to playing fast and loose with the chocolate chips, recklessly pouring an entire bag into every batch of dough. Sometimes I even add extras. Every time I do it, though, I hear my mother’s voice and remember her many admonitions.
48
L I F E & S T Y L E
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs