In honor of my dear Mom who at this moment is on a plane coming to France with my oldest niece Patti.
By the time she arrives at our home, she will have traveled 25 hours. Please surround them with happy thoughts and a restful and uneventful journey.
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My mom missed her calling. Well I should say her second calling, her first calling was to be a mother, and she is a darn good one. No, wait a minute… I should say she missed her fourth calling… My mom's first calling was to be a wife, then her second calling was to be a mother, and her third calling to be a grandmother… oops, maybe I should preface this… My mom was a wonderful wife, she is a wonderful mother, and grandmother… if you put those "callings" aside, my mom's calling… well wait again she is such a natural at creating a home and creating an ambiance, so not counting that either, my mom's calling is she is a baker.
If you have ever had any of my mother's baked good you would agree, she should have opened a cafe or a bakery.
My cousin Joan brought my mom some enormous apricots, and when I say enormous I mean apricots the size of apples. Which, one would think, must have had some sort of additive, or hormone, or grafting, added to it to make them that large.
But my cousin Joan is organic as they come, so these apricots which came from her garden are organic too.
Anyway, Joan brought apricots to my mother.
My brother Mat took one look at them and pronounced them to beautiful to bake into a pie.
My brother Mat makes a delicious apricot pie too. He uses my mother's recipe. And a pie isn't a pie without a flaky golden crust. Which both my mother and Mat have mastered.
But tell a baker she cannot bake is like telling a fish to swim without water.
Anyway, Mat gave a lecture, (Which is his first calling, and one we wish he would drop like a hot potato, not really, but sort of.) about the goodness of eating fresh fruit and not baking Joan's apricots into something. Then he started to eat them, my mother had to pull some aside rapidly so she could pursue her true calling.
(Photo: A pit, an apricot and a peach of a guy who ate most of the apricots and half of the pie.)
(No photo of the pie because that is what happens when you grow up in a large family… either you take a photo and miss out on dessert, or dive in and get a piece while the pieces are for the gettin'. )
What is your favorite pie? Do you have the recipe you'd like to share? What is your first calling?
Mine was to be a priest.
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