Then there was the story of the young bride who spent an entire moning wandering up and down the aisles of the supermarket looking for “Scratch,” because that’s what her new husband’s mother made everything from.
I make gravy exactly like my mum who made it exactly like her mum.
It’s a secret family recipe
Neither of us have ever been able to pick up how my grandmother makes her gorgeous meatballs though… 
They really are cooked in the most delicious way and they just melt in your mouth… and now I’m feeling hungry
I was disgusted that my wife cooks grilled cheese sandwiches with mayo on the bread instead of butter like Mom did. I did get over it after a while.
Hm, My mom is great for basic iowa farm 20s and 30s germanic cooking. I also had a german govorness that taught me how to cook a lot of german foods. I am classically trained in french cuisine, and do all sorts of odd cooking on my own [this thanksgiving we are doing persian.] like japanese, chinese and medieval european=)
She had to become fairly self reliant, being farm raised in the depression, and later going on to be a military spouse. In between she worked her way through ww2 in the engineering department of an aircraft factory, and worked her way through college. I am very self reliant, coming in very handy because i am also a military spouse, and I am also a trained inside - outside mechanic.
She got me hooked on reading chaucer, shakespeare and instead of kiddy-pap, Costain’s historic romances, and arranged for me to get to use the whole library instead of just the kiddy section [though she did sort of wonder why I checked out a book on Jack the Ripper when I was 8 until I explained that I wanted to see what the fuss was about the murderer in that star trec episode…and sighed at me when I got hooked on flemings bond novels and science fiction/fantasy.]
She seems happy at the way I turned out, and we have always been friends - even in my terrorist teen years=)
I picked up many of my cooking habits while mom was working nights, and I haven’t really kept many of hers.
But we do always share hobbies. I’ve become my mother in that respect. We’ll each pick up a new thing, work on it for a couple of years, and then move on to something else. We quilted at the same time and on the same brand of machine, and we both got into photography at roughly the same times. I figure I’ll want to do stained glass any day now, based on what mom does, but only if she gets into roping!
And I garden exactly like my mom. I may not know why I do it, but I bet it’s because mom did it that way. And my tomatoes are just as good as hers ever were.
I’m turning into my mother. We already speak alike and read a lot of the same books. I get a lot of recipes from her, but I have many of my own, too. I dip chocolates at Christmas, just like her. I’ve started taking early-morning walks like her. And when I’m annoyed at my kids, her expressions jump out of my mouth in a bizarre and uncanny way.
My mom has a lot of oddball prejudices; she doesn’t like Barbie, shopping clubs (paying to buy things? I don’t think so), or a bunch of other random things, usually on moral grounds. I have absorbed a lot of them, though we do belong to CostCo, and I have the same feeling that certain things are decadent. VCRs in the family van are decadent, for example. So is using the clothes dryer on a good sunny day, especially for jeans.
I’m not as good a gardener, though. And I’m only the junior Information Lady–she still knows an awful lot more. I did pick up quilting from her, but I’ve become much more intensive about it than she is.
Luckily my mom is a pretty good person to turn into. But my dad and husband still make fun of me a lot.
I wind up cooking a lot of meals like my Mom did, totally by default. I swear I never start out intending to do so, it just happens. I’ve run my own household for a dozen years, and yet still find myself calling Mom if I want to try a new cut of meat or something. It’s not like I don’t own cookbooks or have an inability to follow recipes, I just presume she knows all things cookery related.
One thing I’m sorta proud of, though, is recognizing some similar traits but also recognizing where I wanted to differ. My mom’s such a typical cancer, total homebody, lives for her family, etc. I’m a cancer too and have a lot of the same tendencies to want to feed and snuggle everyone in need. But my mother spent so much of her life in service to her family she somehow neglecting friendships along the way. Now that the older generations are gone and her kids and grandkids have busy lives of their own, she’s quite lonely. If you spend all your time with family, good friending skills get rusty, family has to love you even if you’re dorky sometimes, eh?
So, I’ve made a concerted effort to spend as much or more time on my friendships as I do with my family, and I’m very blessed with a great close circle of friends. My ‘family of choice’ even though I’m blessed with a blood family as well. I’m still as nurturing as Mom, I just spread it around a bit more evenly.
You know even though I loved my mum and there are similarities, like the way my grey hair is coming in, this made me glad I take after Dad’s side more – like my limbs are my own. What disconcerted me very much though was finding a photo of my nana, about five years older than I am now, and thinking “Damn I’ve seen that expression in the mirror…” At least it wasn’t her scowl.
“The dishes aren’t done until the kitchen sink is scrubbed.”
“Ankle bracelets are for tramps.”
“When you are getting ready to go out, pick out all the jewelry you plan to wear, look in the mirror, and take off one piece.”
Just little things like that. My cooking kind of went into a different direction from hers, but she spent a lot of time in the kitchen with me when I was a kid, and I still make her peanut butter cookies–taught my 15 year old how to make them a couple weeks ago. She died ten years ago Nov 4th. I miss her.
I love my mum, but a lot of her methods irritate me. I take after my dad a lot more. I honestly believe my dad is the most logical, sensible, efficient person I know. My mum is the most tolerant, understanding, caring person I know.
If I was an exact copy of my dad (minus the conservative wife [my step-mother] I’d be happy. My step-mother is a great person. I like her, and she can be fun, but her conservative opinions conflict with my liberal ones)
I have to ask:
What about a tatoo for an ankle bracelet? (And I do mean a tatoo ankle bracelet)
I learned to cook from my mom, but took it in a different direction. I learned to sew from my mom, but expanded it to cross-stitch and quilting.
But I iron a shirt exactly the way she taught me to iron. Collar, then shoulders, then cuffs, then sleeves, then body.
I called her a couple of years ago and told her that, while I hadn’t appreciated that she was teaching me a Life Skill (quilterguy was about to go to a conference and I was ironing his shirts), DANG, I could iron a shirt!
I always wondered why I would NEVER in a million years wear an ankle bracelet, and why I had trouble figuring why anyone in their right mind would. They’re the quintessence of tackiness.
I don’t recall ever hearing my mom express an opinion on them one way or the other, though. I’ll have to call her tomorrow and get her stance on ankle bracelets
Oh, I’m a mom-clone in more ways than I’d like to admit.
When I was 10, I would never do anything like my mom. :smack:
When my stepson was 14, he began laundering all his own clothes. He folded his underwear like his mother did and it drove me crackers. They just don’t fit in the drawer right.
Although she’s no longer with us, things like cooking, cleaning, and folding are the direct result of my mom’s influence.
Thanks, Mom.
[ul][li]Keep a pair of walking shoes in the car. No matter what they look like, they’ll come in handy sometimes.[/li][li]Never buy anything you’ll only wear once except your wedding dress.[/li][li]Save vegetable scraps and make soup. It’s cheaper and better than the stuff in a can.[/li][li]Learn to do a yarncraft (knitting or crochet) because there may be a time when you’re poor when winter’s on the way.[/li][li]When you cook anything with a strong odor, put a little dish of white vinegar out by the stove. If nothing else, you can use it to clean the stove afterward.[/li][li]When you have to stir something constantly, start with your left (non-dominant) hand so that when it gets tired, you’ll have plenty of oomph in your stronger hand to keep things going.[/li]Never use a credit card to pay for anything that will be gone before the bill comes: food, gasoline or pantyhose.[/ul]
My frown is eerily like my mother’s. I don’t look that much like her, but I frowned into the mirror one day and it was like her face was staring back at me. Creepy. Our voices are also very similar. Towels are not properly folded unless they’re done in the half-half-thirds way she taught me, and I can’t stand any laundry detergent except All, because that’s what she uses. I don’t cook much, but I do everything the way I’ve seen her do.
She believed in teaching us how to do chores not only so we would know how, but also so she wouldn’t have to do them. So when I’m home, I cook, clean, and do the laundry. I also iron her work pants–I still can’t iron shirts worth a darn.
I cook a lot of my mother’s recipes, I love her pork and tinned peaches casserole (invented by accident many moons ago), but irishfella hates tinned peaches, so I have to make it without
I also have here abhorrence for tumble dryers and wet clothes hanging up around the house. My dream is to have a linen room, where I can put all of the laundry to dry when it’s too wet to go outside, just like she does.
From my grandmother I have learned to make beds with hospital corners, that milk and condiments should be put on the table in jugs, pots or dishes- NEVER in their bottles. She also taught me the correct way to iron a shirt (collar, cuffs, yoke, sleeves, back, front).
My mom made chocolate layer cake with chocolate icing. She always stuck toothpicks in the layers to hold them together. When I did this my husband thought I was crazy. She also cut it like this: Cut the cake in half, then start slicing parallel lines. So the first piece would be a heel (really good because of the extra frosting), then all the pieces until the other end don’t have much frosting. Most people cut the cake like a pie in wedges.
You know how those baby fingernail scissors are curved? She would use those scissors curved up. So I started cutting my daughter’s fingernails like that until my husband showed me that the curve should match the curve of the fingernail. Aha! That makes sense! What is wrong with my mother, anyway?
We always had spaghetti sauce on macaroni instead of spaghetti. I thought this was normal, too. My husband freaks when I serve it this way.
Being male, I don’t have much to add to this thread but…
I get my cooking ability from my mom, but I took it in new directions. I still use the lasagna recipe she had, but I’ve personalized it and now everyone thinks mine is better.
I keep going through my head of the things she taught me to cook and I don’t make anything much the way she taught me anymore. The only thing I can think of is that I still wait until my spaghetti sauce is done and simmering before I start the water for the pasta. My wife starts the water when she starts the sauce. I think giving the sauce extra time to simmer makes it taste better.
heehee
I dunno what Mom would say; she died before tattoos became mainstream.
Knowing Mom, she would probably make some wry comment about how droopy the tattoo bracelet would be once the wearer reached her 60’s.