Happy Mother's Day!

Seeing as today is Mother's Day, and I waited until 4pm (Hawaii time) to call my mom (much to her displeasure), I decided it was only appropriate to write an entry just for her.

People who casually meet my mom think that she is just sweet as pie.  (cough, cough)  But they do!  Oh she's so nice, they say.  Is she a kindergarten teacher or something?  (couuuugghhhhh)

Nice, she is.  Pie, she is not. 

But that's just how we like her.

She's feisty and opinionated, and while she has calmed down to a simmer in her age, I still see flickers of it at times.  Never afraid to pick up the phone (or go for the in person visit) to demand explanations for small social injustices.  Nothing wrong with being principled.  It made for a very exciting childhood.

She always has her famous sayings, and I will try to do them justice.  Ahem.

"Horse like horse go get"  She used to...oh who I am kidding...she still says this...when I asked her to get me some POG or anything else.

"What you think me, born yesterday?" 

"How many times do I have to tell you that we're poor?"

"Am I the only one that cleans around here?"  (she apparently likes to ask rhetorical questions)

"Too much English" (this one has always confused me)

And of course, what Mom doesn't cook.  While she isn't the type of mom to shy away from box cake mixes, blue box mac and cheese, Spam, vienna sausage, canned beans to go with the vienna sausage, this isn't to say she didn't have a culinary trick or two up her sleeve.  When I go home, usually the first thing I want to eat is something she makes.  I am particularly fond of her hamburger and string beans (yes, it is what it sounds like...with the addition of tomato sauce).  And her beef stew or beef tomato.  And while I try to make these Hawaiian specialties myself, it's just no where close.  I blame the natural beef and organic tomato sauce.  But it's just not the same.

But what I really adore more than anything is her pumpkin pie and banana bread.  The flakiness of the pie crust just blows my mind.  I can never never get mine to do that.  And she can make this flawless pie dough in the ridiculously warm and humid Maui weather.  A seeming impossibility. 

If I can become just half the expert pie maker that she is, then well, my life will be complete.