My Small Kitchen

摘要

On March 1st of last year, I lost my best friend and hilarious sidekick, my joy, my precious mom, Betty Gilman. This issue features a few of my mothers recipes that I grew up with. Mom was never a gourmet cook by any means, but her heart and soul wasin loving and caring for her family. After meeting my Dad in college, she chose wife, homemaker, and mother over the accounting career she was pursuing at the time. Keeping a home and preparing a mealfor her family was not only a necessity, but an expression of love.Born in Tucson, Arizona, she spent her early years in the Southwest and grew to love the vibrant colors of the landscape and the flavors of the traditional dishes of the southwest and Mexico. In her early Middle school years, the family relocated to Oregon. They bought a farm just outside the little town of Creswell where, as the oldest of three girls, she became my grandpa's "right hand man" on the farm. My mom much preferred driving a tractor and feeding cows over sewing and cooking. That could explain why one of the only dishes she knew how to cook in the first year of her marriage was meat-loaf. My sweet dad, after 63 years of marriage, having eaten more meatloafthan most folks would ever care to, never complained when a meatloafwas set on the table for dinner.