Stories told at My Mother's Recipe

There is Cooking Beyond the Microwave

My parents are both busy. They work full days and pick me up late from aftercare each school day at around 6:30 pm. My mother orders food on-line that is delivered in small plastic containers. When we get home from a long day we pop the prepackaged meals into the microwave. We all have to wait for our turns to use the microwave and we have seriously considered buying an additional microwave to speed things up. Imagine my surprise one day when my mother brought me to a device in the kitchen called an oven. She said, “Today we will make spanakopita.” I was not very excited because she told me that spinach is one of the main ingredients and I don’t like most vegetables. We opened up a bag of spinach and cooked it on the stove top. We added butter, sour cream, Parmesan cheese and salt. We cut up an onion and I was shocked when I started to cry and I was not even sad. We cut garlic and added it to the pot. My mother said that making real filo dough is super hard and she said that Pillsbury dough is much easier so we used it instead. She said “it’s like the microwave of dough.” We took the spinach mixture and wrapped the dough around it. Then we cooked it for 15 minutes until the dough became brown. To my surprise it was delicious. I even liked the spinach! Probably because of all the yummy stuff like butter, salt and cheese. In my home the oven still is rarely used, but a few times a year we come together to cook spanakopita and believe it or not sometimes my dad even helps too. We all have a fun time cooking together!

Eva Morano, age 8

2019 May 12