My Mom- Determined , Stubborn and a Great Cook

Any idea what happened here? Little background to divulge first. My mom had visited this past summer over a period of time sufficient to attend the two weddings. The first wedding was on August 2nd and the second September 27th. Mom has made enough trips out here that we all have become accustomed to her taking over the kitchen from time to time to make one of her southern Italian specialties. Not only were us humans salivating with anticipation but good old Dinker yelped with glee when Mom made her appearance after an 18 month hiatus.

Up to this point she had already presented us with most of her favorite items but it was now September 14 and with less than three weeks remaining in her stay it was time for Baked Ziti and meatballs. Vincent had a soccer game out in Cypress and the temperature promised to be near 90 so Mom decided to stay home and cook while we went out to Orange County for the afternoon. She promised that dinner would be waiting when we returned.



Vincent's team played a great game but came out on the losing side of the score. But once we were back on our way north to home we could almost smell the meat sauce as we approached Long Beach. Upon our arrival home dinner was indeed waiting but as we gathered our drinks to accompany the feast I couldn't help but notice the two mangled cans. Both cans were empty and the can opener was out on the counter. So why the rather abrupt appearance in the cans.

I asked Mom if she had any problems getting dinner ready. She then smiled and giggled sheepishly and said " you wanna know a funny thing?" I thought and said "yeah, I think I do." I won't be able to recall this exactly but her statement went something like this. She said "I got the meatballs all ready and I made the little meatballs and the big meatballs because I know that the boys like both. I had the meatballs browned and ready for the tomato sauce. So I got the can openner and I couldn't hold the can the right way to make the can opener work. With my arthritis it hurt my hands to hold with one hand and push down with the other. I was getting worried and mad. What am I going to do. I need the sauce and I didn't want to disappoint the boys. So I grabbed the big knife and stabbed the can to open it. It wasn't too bad to open both cans. Now we can eat."

And feast we did!