My mother's cooking

I have spend many hours looking at restaurants , granjas and bars in Barcelona. Best tapas? Best churros? Best catalan cooking? Best patatas bravas? etc etc.

I am so looking forward to eat the food of my youth that I cannot find in the States.

My mother had 10 sisters, my grandmother assigned each one of them a task to do around the house: clean the house, wash dishes, sew buttons and hems etc. She decided based on what task they each could perform best.

My mother was the cook. My grandmother always said that Pepita made the best tortilla de patatas in Barcelona. My mother cooked for everybody in the house, she was the chef but had some of her sisters doing sous chef duties, peeling, mincing, cutting etc.

When she got married she cooked for my father and he was hooked on her tortilla de patatas! Tomorrow I will write about my father and his favorite foods.

When I was born, we were pretty wealthy. We had a nanny, chauffer, cook, maid, etc. So my mother didn't do much cooking then, just the tortilla de patatas every night as requested by my father.

Then came the hard times, we had to downsize a lot, and she was back to cooking full time. My grandmother (yaya) was the sous chef, she did all the prep, she also did the grocery shopping.

We had 2 main meals, lunch around 2:30PM and dinner around 10:PM. Breakfast was light, croissant, ensaimada or madgdalenas with  Cacaolat or ColaCao.

For lunch we almost always had a salad first, or soup, then Catalan meatballs, or stew, or butifarra amb munxetes, lamb chops, croquetas, fish  etc.  For dessert we had fruit, or my favorite, a slice of bread soaked in red wine with sugar sprinkled on top.

Mid afternoon we had merienda, around 6PM, usually bread with butter and chocolate, or some kind of pastry.  

For dinner we always had eggs of some kind, mostly tortilla de patatas y cebolla, or buñuelos de bacalao, or white rice with a fried egg and half a grilled tomato. Usually with green beans and potatoes for accompaniment. No dessert.

Our Sunday meals were great. Paella, or macarrones, or moluscos, or fish, pollo etc. and for dessert my father akways brought something yummy from the pasteleria.

I have nothing but great memories of my mother's cooking.

After I got married and came to the States, that's one of the things I missed the most. I regretted many times that I didn't  learn more about cooking from my mother.  My mother in law's cooking was very different to what I was used and my own cooking was not so great either.

I always looked forward to traveling to Barcelona where I could again enjoy my mother's cooking. Marvin and the girls enjoyed her cooking too. Marvin always was surprised about what great meals she could make just using a little pan and a fork  :)  When I cooked I used many pans, spoons, turners, etc. and it never tasted as good as hers.  I am always disappointed when I try to cook something the way she did, and it ends up not really looking or tasting the same way at all.

My mother. la millor cuinera del mon!

   My mother in Platja, 1994 cooking a paella at my request.

 She was 83 years old.