Mother's Day

Friday was the second anniversary of my mom's death and I miss her a lot. Happily, around fifteen years ago my brother compiled the recipes my mom used when she was feeding her eight children, and printed up a little cookbook called Cooking with Jane. A few years later the second edition, More Cooking with Jane, hit the street, and it also had recipes by us eight kids and our spouses. All of us use it for classics like meatloaf, beef stroganoff, lasagna, salad dressing, and spice cake with caramel frosting, my perennial birthday cake.
This morning, my two oldest kids pulled out the family cookbook and made a large heart-shaped oatmeal scone with a big 'M' cut into the middle of it for their mother. We put it on our red "You Are Special Today" plate and brought it upstairs with coffee, the Sunday newspaper, cards, and a present.
For dinner, I made my wife's favorite dessert, pound cake. I make a very simple pound cake, with butter, sugar, eggs, a little salt, and flour. I usually add a teaspoon of vanilla but with spring in the air I added a bit of lemon zest instead.
After a good dinner of grilled steak, home fries cooked in bacon drippings, and sauteed bok choy, we all sat around the dinner table eating thin slices of pound cake, everyone with their favorite way to nibble the buttery edges on the way to the softest, finest crumb found on any cake.
Happy Mother's Day to my sweet wife.