Mother's Day

What do you do when you are responsible for organizing the celebration for a holiday that’s supposed to be in your honor?

This was my Mother’s Day dilemma this year. DP is on the road again and, aside from a half-asleep phone call from London at 8am, was out of the equation. Miss B, while generous with hugs and verbal appreciation, doesn’t really have the wherewithal to take charge at this stage of the proceedings. I, caught in the full Nelson of solo parenting and a crushing work deadline, figured adding this on to my To Do list might just send me around the bend.

In this fatalistic frame of mind, I considered my options:

1. Sulk.
2. Ignore the whole thing.
3. Do something nice for myself that wouldn’t drive up my stress levels any further.

Put that way, #3 was the clear winner. And—no surprises here—the something nice for myself was food-related. I finally made myself that apple pie I’ve been craving since last November, and tried to sell my family on just last week. I defrosted the batch of Anxiety-Free Pâte Brisée that had been waiting in my freezer for pie-worthy apples; then all I had to do was prep about eight apples out of the huge box I recently bought at a roadside stand (seasoning them as I went with a pre-made mixture of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger, and sprinkling with lemon juice); roll out the crust; assemble, and bake.

It wasn’t as good as my mother’s apple pie (among her many other virtues, my mother makes the best apple pie in the whole wide world), but it was pretty damn good. And a perfect end to a low-key Mother’s Day spent doing all the things mothers usually do.

Happy Mother’s Day!