Mothers Day ©

Its Mothers Day today and my mother worked her butt off getting everything ready. It’s not like she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
We were and always are prepared to take care of everything, but according to her, she does it because she knows what she wants and we’d just screw everything up and she’d have a bigger mess to clean up the next day.
When I did get to my mothers, the menu was a typical Sunday brunch except for the cakes and the flowers.
Being Greek, there has always been this idea that you have to cook a lot of food just incase someone drops by.
Then you have to feed them too.
Guests have to have something to eat or it’s and insult, but the guests put up a fight.
For example: 2 sisters at a family gathering.
“Have a kurabietha “ (Kurabietha = cookies , 60% butter, 20% sugar,10% eggs,10% flour and everything else. Then covered in icing sugar)
“No thank you I’m full”.
“Oh, ok. How about a Thipla then?” (Thipla = a thin rolled piece of pastry dough, fried in oil and the saturated in melted honey)
“No, I’m not hungry”.
“The Mellomacarina are good, I made them yesterday.” (Mellomacarina = cookie, walnuts crushed with flour, eggs and lots of butter, and after baking, soaked in melted honey)
” I said, I’m not hungry.”
“But I didn’t offer you any.”
“Why, I’m not good enough for your Mellomacarina.”
“It’s not that, you just said, you were not hungry.”
“Maybe I was waiting for you to ask me, so I could say yes.”
“Ah, ok then. Do you want a Mellomacarino?”
“No. I said I wasn’t hungry”
“You have to have something. I eat when I come to your place.”
“Ok I’ll have a piece of cake.”
“I don’t have cake.”
“What? You didn’t make cake?”
“I had no time, I made all of this.”
“I would have made cake too. Ok give ma a Mellomacarino.”
This is a common occurrence at one of our gatherings.
Then when we sit down to eat, my mother asks the sister in laws daughter, what she would like.
The girl says that she is not hungry.
My mother proceeds to put 2 pieces of chicken on her plate and a pork chop.
I tell her that the girl said she wasn’t hungry.
My mother comes back with; yes she is hungry, just to shy to take food on her own.
Mothers have ESP to don’t you know.


Today’s menu:
40 pieces of BBQ’d chicken
20-30 BBQ’d Pork chops
20 BBQ’d sausages
Tomato Salad
Caesar Salad
Stir fried rice (my mother’s favorite)
Feta cheese
Olives
Dolmathes (rice wrapped in grape leaves. then cooked with lemon)
Home made bread.
1 Almond cake
1 Pineapple cake
It’s a good thing there were 5 of us.

Yiasou (Cheers in Greek)

Happy Mothers Day

60 Years Ago

On a somber note, on this day of appreciation to our mothers, I would like to take a minute and remember the people who died during the Second World War.
On May 8, 60 years ago today, the Germans surrendered ending the war in Europe.
Many mothers lost their sons and daughters during this period.
It doesn’t matter which side they were on, nationality or their religion, mothers lost a children.
War is the drain that washes life away, which leaves nothing but emptiness, and despair, to both victor and vanquished.
60 million people, military and civilian died in WWII.
We should remember the loss more than the victory, because a true victory would have been no war and no death.

I salute all veterans through out the world and their mothers.

Walker