Gotta Leave It All Behind and Face the Truth

One of my mom's home dishes

Picadillo Mexicano

So normally you would have twice the meat and half the potatoes but I only had a pound of ground beef.  This is a dish that my mom would make on weeknights before they bought and managed a restaurant and we ate like kings at home.  I never knew it had a real name but found it on a recent You Tube food excursion.  Carrots are missing as well from my dish but the taste was there of the Cumino seed and rustic, earthy potato.  A great example of the peasant type of cooking she did at home.  Opposite of the cheese laden platters in the restaurant although those kicked ass as well.

My mom was a great example of someone who's presence gave so much comfort.  Her house, her food, her smell, her beauty, her essence.  Her mind tortured her own self with so much worry, negative thoughts and woe but yet she was sometimes able to show you how all your own worries were unnecessary.  And everything she touched had tons of love and care shone upon it.  Her plants were so happy.  Sitting on the steps alongside her hillside garden was one of my first understandings of zen as a young girl.  Seeing her joy and gentleness in the tiny flowers and giant leaves of the Rhubarb, the beauty of her roses on the trellis.  It was as if the whole yard was alive with her love, happy as clams.  And we could sit out there in the sun and eat the berries off of the mulberry bushes, just drinking it all in.  Even the grass seemed to grow especially deep green and thick.  Then the wind would bend it all to show the lighter shaded backside of the blades.  

She could never escape her mind's torment during her time here but I rejoice knowing that she shed it all before moving on. I choose to remember her spirit in all these incredibly delicious dishes and in the breeze from that back yard where all her love grew.