Whole Lotta Love

Dementia has a lot of faces but one that I'm thinking of tonight is a sweet one. One night when I went to visit my mother at the rehabilitation hospital in Tucson on my visit, I was asking her if she had eaten anything that day. For some reason my mother would not eat there but she had a voracious appetite when she returned home. Anyway, she told me that her mother had given her lunch after school already and like many times a day, I went with her train of thought so as not to confuse her and it was also much more interesting. She went on to tell me of her mom making her pork tacos that day. She said it as if I was talking to my 8 year old little mom-child, with a slight accent and child's voice. The way she talked about her mom seemed so loving and thoughtful. The way you feel about your mother when you're that age and maybe come around to feel again if you're lucky. Her mother made her dresses and pants, everything she needed for school. She used fabric from anything she could find even potato sacks. I didn't know tons about my grandmother but to me she seemed like such a serious woman with a ton of worry and unhappiness. Her husband left her for a younger woman but it was never talked about. Its nice to think of her happy and making little clothes for my mother. And its always a wonderful thought to think of my little mom happy and going to school in new clothes with a nice sack lunch of tacos. I know she grew up in a suburb of Chicago during the depression. I'm sure it wasn't easy. It is easy to spot her in this school picture. She's the young one and her older sister is the taller one.


Tonight I thought about nice homemade tacos made with love and from good ingredients. I took the meat off of the baked chicken thighs and whipped up a little purple cabbage, green apple, red onion, jalapeno slaw to top them. I added green olives like I've had in some of the restaurants here on pork tacos and that really added a great little twist. Very good idea. Mission has a good yellow thin corn tortilla that heats up nicely right on the griddle without getting dry. No need to add oil.