Mother's Day 2009

Once again on Mother's Day I was fortunate enough to be able to cook dinner for my own mother, as well as the mother of my rascals.

Since I didn't have much interest in doing all the work I enlisted the help of my boys in planning the meal. Originally the boys were going to do some cooking, but Daniel came down with a cold last night, so I figured that was out. Suzy was off on her Saturday hike with the girls (she says she was hiking, but she came back with a full water bottle, clean shoes and shopping bags. Should I be worried?).

So the menu planning went something like this:

'Boys!'

'Yes, dada?'

'Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I want you guys to figure out what we are going to cook for Nana [my mom] and mama. Remember, this isn't something that you guys want, I want you to think about what they want.'

The boys scrambled off to do their scheming. I had a feeling about what cookbooks they would gravitate to. We each have our favorites. Suzy actually has more than one, and they look very fancy and healthy, but they actually come out surprisingly good. My favorite is 'Help my Apartment has a Kitchen', I have used it for years (since I lived in an apartment), and it has the stains to prove it.

The boys, however, have two favorites, Wookiee Cookies and Disney the Magic Kitchen. Daniel is regularly pestering us to cook things like, 'Han Burgers' or 'Skywalker Smoothies'.

So the boys came back with their selections,

'Galaxy Grilled Cheese' and 'Disappearing Chocolate Cookies'.

As much as cooking grilled cheese sandwiches for Mother's Day appealed to me I sent them back to try again,

'Remember boys, this is supposed to be something that mama and nana will like.'

'Ok.' They were clearly disappointed, but glumly walked back to do more research.

About a minute later they came back with attempt number two....

'Crazy Cantina Chili'

Not wanting to push my luck I decided that would work. We talked about ingredients, made a shopping list together (Sammy was there mostly for moral support during that part), and finalized our plan of attack.

Excepting Daniel getting sick the plan worked pretty well. The boys were good today, Mama and Nana made all the appreciative noises one could hope for, both for the chili and the homemade cards the boys made. The chili was actually quite good for being veggie (who knew the Star Wars world was so hip to come up with veggie chili). And the Disappearing Chocolate Cookies lived up to their name, they disappeared quite quickly.

Happy Mother's Day, Suzy, Nana, Tutu, Cassi, Chrissie and all the rest of you mom's out there in CyberSpace. I hope each of you got what you wanted, maybe even a little Crazy Cantina Chili.