These days, as I weather the storms of having three teenagers, I think more and more of my mother when my older brother and I were teenagers. I find myself thinking, “Now, I understood what she must have gone through.”

My mother is Colombian and I grew up on all kinds of Spanish proverbs. Now, that I am around her age when we were teenagers, I also find myself repeating those sayings in so many situations. Here are a few, which lose something in the translation, but at least you’ll get the gist:

* He was left without the goat or the rope
* There is no bad from which some good doesn’t come forth
* Don’t look for the three legs on the cat (meaning, don’t look for trouble)
* For a good time, there’s always a good fright (this one rhymes in Spanish)

Anyway, you get the idea.

My mother is not doing too well these days. She suffered a stroke a few years ago and slowly is declining. But she was a strong woman, who had to do a lot on her own in a strange country, to give us a good start in life. I know I’ll have to say a temporary goodbye to her soon, but I know when we next see each other, it’ll be better, when we’re not weighed down by these mortal bodies.

My mother was a very good cook. She never read recipes much. Instead, she watched someone make a dish, and the next time, she was able to make it herself. This is the way she learned how to cook traditional New England dishes when she first came to the U.S.

She made the best apple pie—as well as pumpkin, blueberry and strawberry rhubarb. She didn’t have as much opportunity to cook her own native dishes, but her most famous dish which we did enjoy often was Arroz con Pollo (chicken and rice), which was like paella but without the seafood.

Here’s her apple pie recipe, which she learned from a little old lady in Maine:

Apple Pie

6-8 sour apples

½ to ¾ c. sugar

¼ teas. cinnamon

1/8 teas. salt

½ tbsp. butter

2 teas. lemon juice

2 tbsp. corn starch

Plain Pastry

1 ½ cups flour

½ c. lard or other shortening (incl. Butter)

½ teas. Salt

ice water (about 3/8 cup)

Add salt to flour and work in lard with fingertips or pastry knife until shortening is evenly mixed in bits the size of peas. Moisten with ice water. Chill.

Toss onto board or cloth dredged sparingly with flour, pat and roll out to about 1/8 inch thickness.

Line pie plate with pastry. Pare, core, and cut apples into slices. Sprinke lemon juice over them. Combine sugar, cinnamon, salt and corn starch. Sprinkle a tablespoon on bottom of pan. Line with apples, then sprinkle more of the sugar mixture over these. Continue layering apples and sugar mixture till pie plate is heaping. Dot with butter. Cover with pastry and crimp edges. Cut a whole in center top of pastry and/or make slashes around it with a knife.

Cover pie edges loosely with foil and place in preheated 425o oven for 10 min. Lower heat to 350o and bake 45 minutes more or until juices are bubbling and apples are tender if pricked with fork.

For more about Ruth’s books:

www.RuthAxtellMorren.com
http://ruthaxtellmorren.blogspot.com

The Making of a Gentleman, Steeple Hill mass market.,Aug.’08
A Man Most Worthy, Love Inspired Historical, Oct.’08

Thanks, Ruth. But I’d like your mother’s Arroz con Pollo recipe too! Anybody else?–Lyn