heart of the home

I woke up this morning after the first really good night's sleep in awhile and made cinnamon rolls. Not the homemade kind, the unroll-the-can-till-it-pops, makes-5-instead-of-5-dozen kind. I threw them in the oven to bake while I made my blog rounds.

When I was summoned by the timer, I went in to ice them. I was suddenly transported to a time ten years ago when I had made cinnamon rolls from scratch. It was the first time I had made them completely on my own, the first time I had made them after Mom died. When they turned out fine, I realized that my brother and I would be ok.

There were a few other recipes that I thought that about at the time. When I was growing up, Mom always cooked and baked. She didn't make packaged meals of any kind when I was very small. I doubt her mother even knew boxes of things like macaroni and cheese existed. And how do you help hamburger? Probably by deep frying it and covering it with gravy.

Cooking was very important in our family. You'd think that my mom would have taught me how to do things step-by-step. She didn't. I was just always in the kitchen with her and learned by watching.

I cooked fairly regularly (even when I was only cooking for me) until a few years ago when I started traveling for work. Before that time, I was either in grad school (who forgoes a free meal then?) or had friends who were always over or had co-workers who could enjoy my treats. This morning part of me missed all that. Part of me wanted to just chunk these perfectly mediocre cinnamon rolls and start from scratch. But with my brother out of town and me on the road again next week, I'm hesitant. Sometimes it's frustrating being a stay-at-home mom in a single, working girl's body.