I have begged Mom's forgiveness long ago for my unwarranted criticism of her, and not only did she grant me total absolution, she found it greatly amusing. The same issue has come up for me again recently, and confession being good for humility, I thought I would revisit it here.
I already had to apologize to my mother for my arrogance as a teenager regarding an incident of an unforgivable slight to my food preferences when she mistakenly bought (GASP!) CRUNCHY peanut butter. At the time, I detested crunchy peanut butter, perhaps because I was too lazy to chew. I was not usually disrespectful to my dear mother, who indulged us daily with good homemade food, prepared to our liking. However, since I was suffering from the “testosterone poisoning” of the brain that happens during puberty, I scathingly criticized her for her mistake. I said, “How could you possibly mistake CRUNCHY for CREAMY?! Not only does it say it CLEARLY on the label, but the words themselves are in different COLORS."
I arrogantly thought at the time, that such a blatant oversight was inexcusable. My apology came later, as a grown up with responsibilities, after I had squeezed a shopping trip into my very busy life, with children along. Working, taking care of the spouse and house, pets and children, I found my usual attention to detail a bit faulty. Planning a week's worth of healthy delicious menus and buying all the ingredients, while entertaining youngsters in the actual store (but without making a scene worthy of a mental health evaluation) was not as easy as Mom had made it look.
I returned from the store and unpacked my groceries. I was so shocked that I was sure that someone must have switched products. I have been a vegetarian for years. I had picked out vegetarian baked beans, as usual. Somehow in the chaos and confusion, I had grabbed a can that said CLEARLY on the label, “Pork and Beans.” Not only were the words in different COLORS, the can itself was a different color, because it was a completely different brand. How could I possibly mistake the two? Apparently, with enough distraction, I had grabbed the wrong one off the shelf, placed it into the cart, unloaded it from the cart, put it on the belt at the checkout, and bagged it, without actually seeing it. My mother laughed, not unkindly AT me, but WITH me. She knew exactly how it could be, and now, so did I.
Just this past week, without anyone along on my shopping trip to blame for distracting me, I bought a half-case of Bounty Select-A-Size paper towels. I hate this product. I am not wasteful, and I do more than the average person to be gentle on our Earth, but the size I want to “select” to clean up with is… a WHOLE paper towel. I have tried to use these, but even though I am not a math wizard, I know that needing TWO half sheets of paper towel for a mess means that you really needed a WHOLE one. I have never walked around the house looking for something else to clean up because I have only used half of my paper towel. I am not wasteful, so I will use the other eleven rolls, but I will be grumbling for many months. How is such a blatant oversight possible?
So, it is without any implied criticism, and with much personal empathy, that I now share something funny from the height of our “Distracted Mom” years. My mother was no stranger to making homemade bread. I had only experienced having Wonder Bread glued to the roof of my mouth at other people's houses. Mom often made perfectly light yet hearty loaves, as well as Aunt Dot's sandwich buns, or Aunt Mary's cinnamon rolls with their caramelized bottoms. As one child in our family became two, and then three, the time to raise and knock down the dough was taking away from the raising of the children, who frequently knocked down each other. Mom heard about a shortcut.
It was a product called Rhodes Frozen Bread Dough. There were three in a bag and you pulled them out of the freezer, let them rise for hours, and then baked them. This was before the advent of those strange square and heavy loaves that could be made with a bread machine. The Rhodes bread was a decent substitute for Mom's homemade, eliminating some of the steps for her. The majority of times, she was very successful.
However, there was one flaw to the Rhodes product. The rise happened slowly as the frozen bread dough thawed. It thrived on hours of benign neglect, unlike the children. So it saved time and steps, but when it was ready, the baker could not be distracted. We pesky kids loved to distract our mother, and our mom was pretty talented at taking on complex projects that also distracted her. When this bread was not successful, it was a legendary failure.
One of the times, Mom got busy and forgot the dough was rising on the counter. It became a science fiction movie. It raised itself out of the bread pans, creeping out from under the damp cotton towel, and became the Blob, seeking things to devour. It completely enveloped the sugar bowl, the salt and pepper shakers, a container full of toothpicks, and was working on a dozen napkins in their holder. The bread was ruined. The cleanup of springy, sticky dough off those items was not very time-saving.
Another appearance of the Blob was when Grandpa Joe was living with us. It was a lovely spring day, so to keep the dough out of the drafts from the open windows, Mom decided she could let it rise in the oven itself. Unfortunately, her distracting progeny had some mandatory event that we forgot to mention to her, turning all four of us into Whirling Dervishes. Grandpa wisely hid in his room until we left, but he heard a strange creaking noise upstairs. He was not a timid man, but was a little concerned when the dog was growling at something around the corner in the kitchen. There was another creak. Grandpa Joe saw the oven door being pushed open from the inside by a tan substance that was slowly oozing out all sides. The dog had seen what happened to the items on the sideboard and was in fear for her life. Like a good horror movie, at that very moment, there was a startling BANG! as the oven door opened enough to turn on the light inside. The creature imploded and the door slammed shut. They both jumped, but while Grandpa Joe was amused, the dog remained wary of the abode of the Terrifying Hot Box Creature for weeks. This was not a self-cleaning oven. Again, it was not such a time-saver to scrub collapsed dough off of all surfaces of an oven interior, including the racks.
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Mom's picture of another forgotten Rhodes batch. Notice the
bread pans are no longer visible. |
The Blob's best attempt to destroy our family was when Mom decided to put the dough on the windowsill to rise. Again, she was distracted. With one car, if she wanted to go anywhere, she had to roust her three grumpy children to take Dad to work in the morning, and then she had to time it perfectly to be back to pick him up when he was done. We lived in rural PA, where there was nothing within walking distance, and Dad's work was a 40 minute commute one way. Multiply that trip by the four times required for drop off and pick up each day that Mom wanted to do her “running” and add in three kids. I can't do the math, but it makes me tired to think of it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the bread continued to rise unattended all day. By the time we returned home, the Blob had climbed four feet up Mom's blue lace curtains in the living room. It was the perfect ladder for it, and the Blob expanded through the holes as it went. Most of the curtains were now inside the dough. This was the funniest, but least time-saving incident with the Rhodes frozen bread dough.
Actually, what is amazing is that there were not a hundred of these stories about the bread getting away from Mom. I know If I tried it, my track record would not be nearly so good. I rarely found the time to make homemade bread at all. Even using the short-cut product of Rhodes frozen dough was pretty ambitious for a woman distracted by three kids. If it had been me, eventually there would have been a strange news story about a family found smothered by dough in their sleep. Thanks, Mom, for all the delicious food AND for keeping us safe when the Blob attacked!
