KEY POINTS:
Being childless, I am an expert on motherhood. This joke was written for me: "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who have children and those who don't; and those who don't, don't know that there are two kinds of people in the world."
They say raising children is like having long stretches of terror with bursts of supernatural joy.
This year, don't fight Mother's Day - agree that it is commercial, condescending rubbish, then let it go. Say, "Oh good, another party".
On Mother's Day it is never too early to start drinking. Instead of burned toast and cold tea, I suggest you start your mother off with a glass of champagne and peach schnapps in bed.
Motherhood is like morning sickness - you don't rise from your bed until you have eaten something sensible like a pain au chocolat. You buy them frozen and all you have to do is cook them in the oven in the morning. Your mother will awake to the smell of melting chocolate and pastry.
If maman would prefer something dry first thing, may I suggest trying lavash - crispy, thin, delicious dry bread. It comes in various flavours - sesame, spiced and sea salt. Harvest Wholefoods make it. The downside of lavash is that mother may start demanding it every day.
On this day mother can stay in her nightie for as long as she likes - all day maybe. While she is watching a DVD of Gone With The Wind, you, the devoted children, are in the kitchen whipping up the breakfast proper.
The first course will be berries with cream, yoghurt, muesli, honey, orange juice and tea or coffee. The next course should be something warm, probably with eggs in it - and for a pretty and tasty change, use quail eggs. They are tiny, speckled, not expensive, and you can buy them at Asian food stores.
I'm thinking light little tarts of quail eggs and cherry tomatoes would be appreciated. Also on the table would be pain perdu, or French toast, with smoked salmon and beetroot mayonnaise. Make sure maman eats all the salmon because it's dripping with oils rich in omega-3 that reduce the risk of dementia (don't want her going dotty before the will's written).
Home-made mayonnaise is much better than shop-bought but that really depends how much you love your mother. At some stage in the day mother will want something sweet and Mother's Day is the ideal opportunity to make the sweet treat you know she'll truly love.
You could make a tiramisu - an incendiary combination of whisky, marsala, coffee and chocolate, held together with a few sponge fingers; or a tarte Tatin, that heavenly accident where the Tatin sisters made a soggy, burned failure of an apple pie. To save it, they inverted it, and rebaked it with the pastry on top.
It was so good that from then on they always baked it thus, inverting the pie to serve it.
- Detours, HoS
