Life is like a bowl of Chili

As it's winter and the perfect weather for soup, I was going to blog a recipe of my world famous chili.  But when I went to write it down, I realized, I don't have any idea of proportions or ingredients, as it changes every time.  My recipe had a lot of "a little bit of...", "a good amount of...", "maybe some..." I could see all my list-making friends rolling their eyes at me.  I had to laugh as I thought, "Wow, I am my mother's daughter".  

My mom NEVER cooked with a recipe.  Ever.  Even if she was given a recipe, for say, a casserole to be served at church on Easter Sunday...I would always cringe going through the line because my Mom's would NEVER be the typical sausage egg casserole.  There would be the line-up of perfectly consistent casseroles, and then there would be my mom's.  No doubt there'd be some weird mushroom, spice, or texture to it that no one else had.  I remember being so embarrassed and thinking, "Why can't she just follow a recipe one time...just once."  

Don't get me wrong, she was an amazing cook.  Her refusal to use a recipe gave us an extremely large variety of meals growing up...it's probably why us girls are NOT picky eaters.   But it was always sooo sad when she'd hit on a truly epic meal, and we knew we had to savor every bite, because most likely, she'd never make it the same way again.

This was my mother.  The woman who never bought us coloring books...just blank sheets...because she didn't want to stifle our creativity.  We weren't taught to draw inside the lines...because she refused to even give us the option of lines.  I think her least favorite word was "can't"...anything buy can't.  

I craved lines.  I wanted coloring books.  I wished my mother would make an egg casserole like all the other moms from church.  At lunchtime, I wanted a Lunchable like all the other kids...I didn't want to open my sack to find a Japanese onigiri with tuna salad inside and a cucumber salad with vinegar and sesame seeds...just a plain ol' PB'n'J would have been amazing.

But as I went to blog my chili recipe and realized her subtle resistance to rules was now coming through me...I had to smile.  I love that she refused to have her girls believe they needed lines to succeed.  So here's to you, my dear mother...a bowl full of chili with no recipe. :)