Indian Cuisine and Mom’s Memory
My mom has three full drawers of cookbooks in one of those big, tall, gunmetal gray filing cabinets that my dad probably bought at a garage sale 30 years ago. She hasn’t opened any of the drawers since a stroke made getting around difficult, because the filing cabinet is inaccessible to her walker. But as far as that’s concerned, she hasn’t done much cooking since then, either.
Still, she must have poured over some of those cookbooks, because after watching an episode on the food channel, (she now only cooks vicariously) she’ll say something, “In the middle drawer, there’s a cookbook with a red, white and blue cover that has Indian recipes in it.” She’s never actually made any of the recipes, but she knows where the book is.
These days, except for weekends when I cook for her, she eats meals from the local Senior Center. This means, unless I haul out that international cookbook and get inspired, she will never eat Indian food.