Mother’s Day

My mother and my three daughters

I took my mother out for Mother’s Day yesterday. The occasion was originally Mothering Sunday where you went to the Mother church or cathedral of your diocese instead of  the local parish but during the twentieth century it became more commercialized and secularized so that you took her out for a meal at a restaurant. Aristotle said that “Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own” but I put aside such cynicism and enjoyed the moment.  We went to Mother Tucker’s restaurant which had a buffet including roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. My mother is from Yorkshire so it had to serve the pudding. The strange thing is that Yorkshire pudding is a meat extender and if you had a good side of beef in England it wouldn’t be served.

Place setting at my mother's 90th birthday

This is a recipe from Wikipedia to make four Yorkshire puddings:

Ingredients

• 4 oz (110g) plain flour

• 1 large egg

• 1/2 British pint (10 fl oz = 284 ml) milk

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• dripping from roast meat or sunflower oils

• bun or large muffin tin

Procedure

Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt. Mix the egg into the milk, then add this mix piecewise to the flour, beating with a balloon whisk until all the milk is added and the mixture is well beaten. For best results refrigerate the batter for 1 hour.

Place a little of the dripping or oil into each division of the tin and place the tin in the oven to heat (usually the roast joint will still be in the oven), but if cooking separately heat the oven to 200 to 220 degrees Centigrade / Gas mark 7. Once the tin is smoking hot, fill each division with the batter and return to the oven. Remove and serve when risen, firm and brown.

Note: If your egg is small use two eggs and less milk otherwise the pudding will not rise.

Tea and Watercrest sandwiches

It was hard to find a card which didn’t have those florid and wordy lines supposedly written for inarticulate males - the type who eats Yorkie bars. I like the following minimalist wording:

Always there for me
Loving, caring, listening
Knows everything                     (Mother’s Day haiku by Shannon)

My oldest daughter with more tea