From My Mother's Kitchen Garden

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

With four rambunctious children under tow, my mother may have been something of a Super Mom during my childhood. As a working mother, her efforts to run us kids between baseball and ballet practice while making it home in time to cook our nightly family dinner seems nothing short of miraculous in hindsight. But come holidays, such as the big one, Mother’s Day, us kids sometimes had reason to pause and wonder how stereotypically MOM our mother really was.

At holidays, magazines and store displays inundate you with images of what your mother is supposed to be like. If we were to pay attention to what the media told us, in the morning we might expect to find our mother, perfectly coiffed, making cookies in an immaculate kitchen (thank you Martha Stewart). Later, after taking us to school in the mini van, she might jet off to do silly things like work. But we can’t be sure, because she would certainly be there to pick us up when we got out of school in a coordinated Talbots outfit with matching earrings and necklace. In the evening, sometime between setting out our afternoon snack and making dinner, you would find her in the yard, shovel in hand, manicuring our showstopper front lawn. After putting us to sleep she would settle into a warm bath with lighted candles and Andrea Bocelli in the background.

To set the record straight, my mom and dad raised four children while working full time. My mother got her Master’s Degree somewhere along the way, ground her own wheat to bake our weekly bread when we were little, took us to practices and school and made dinner almost nightly. But… she wasn’t a member of PTA, yard work consisted of delegating the mowing to my dad, and I really don’t think she had the time to sit down in a tub with Andrea Bocelli, even if she had wanted to.

But a funny thing happened when the kids were full-grown: my mom discovered her inner Hallmark Mom and started a garden. She did not start just any garden, but a bountiful kitchen garden. Where once a swing set stood in our back yard, she now raised beds of ripe red tomatoes, baby Japanese eggplant, zucchini, cucumber, peppers, strawberries, lemon verbena, sage, mint and so much more. The garden is therapy for my mother, which is much needed after 27 years and counting of raising children. And the same way she nurtured us into adulthood, she now coaxes and prods difficult shoots through dry spells and dangerous pests to reach their delectable maturity.

But much as the relationship between children and their parents change with the entrance to adulthood, so does the kitchen gardener need to adjust her relationship with the fruits of her labor once harvest has arrived. For no longer are zucchinis handled with kid gloves. Well perhaps they are, but this lasts no longer than the walk to the kitchen where the thin fleshed squash will meet the sharp edge of a chef’s knife. And just as parents often do not know how to approach their relationship with children who have gone on to thrive, so a blooming garden can ultimately be daunting in its success.

All things considered, the act of cooking this kitchen garden bounty should pay homage to the gardener and her success. Simple pasta with light olive oil and garlic based sauce serves as a neutral background to any julienned squash. A pristine white bowl can be a goblet of sorts for tomatoes, peppers, and handfuls of herbs, in a cool summer gazpacho.

When the produce is that good, supper often need be no more complicated than slices of tomato, cucumber or other garden edibles garnished with some of those vibrant green and pungent herbs dressed with Kosher salt and a sprinkling of pepper with a light drizzle of olive oil. Served alongside a wedge of cheese and a crusty bread, the meal is complete. However it is prepared, when the food is fresh, simple is the best way to give a grown up elegance to the food that is finally stepping out on its own.

She may be closer to a Hallmark mom than she was in my youth, but that Super Mom complex still can’t stop her from those over-achieving impulses. Where once four of us would do, now a hundred little shoots have taken our place and vie for their own time in the light. Mom, you have succeeded once again, for veggies your time has come to shine: it’s dinnertime!

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 pound penne pasta
• salt
• 2 large patty pan squash (or zucchini or other thin skinned summer squash)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 lemons
• 2 banana peppers
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• black pepper