It kills me that my mother is a better cook than I am. Why will John eat her Caesar salad but mine is too garlicky? Or “sour,” as one of the kids will pipe during dinner. John wolfs my mom’s salad and her parmesan crab crostini’s even though he’s supposedly allergic to crab. He adores his mother-in-law, which seems a little unnatural. He even wears the clothes she buys him! When Mom cooks, she just tosses things in without a recipe—a pinch of this, a fistful of that—but I managed to get her to write down the Caesar salad recipe and reveal her trick: Make sure that the lettuce leaves are super dry. She puts them in the salad spinner then pats them off with paper towels and lets them air dry.

Berta’s Caesar Salad Dressing

Juice of 2 lemons (small ones to avoid having the dressing called sour!)

1/3 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 cloves of garlic (shred with a a grater, and go easy with it—less can be more)

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Beat one raw egg and mix into dressing right before serving.

Salad:

1 head of Romaine lettuce leaves torn (not chopped—she hates it when the pieces are too small. I think someone she once knew used to do that)

Chopped green onions

1 triangle of parmesan cheese, grated (sounds like a lot, but it’s scrumptious)

Croutons (mine are better)

1 pound of bacon—cooked crisp and chopped (I put it on a plate in the microwave between two sheets of paper towels and nuke until it’s crisp)

I’m uneasy about mentioning that I like to add a heaping teaspoon of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard. My dad swears by it. (They have competing Caesars, both delicious. I’ll post yours later, Dad.)

The only food I have Mom beat on is my croutons, which Johns loves. When the kids were younger I relied on the Desperation Dinners! cookbook that I still recommend. Those ladies saved me. They use verbs like chop, crack, crush, throw—I’ll add “whack” and “slam” as in slam the oven door—these croutons are fast and satisfying to make like that.

Crouton recipe

I put olive oil and butter and one clove of pressed garlic and a dash of salt in my iron skillet, throw in chopped up day-old bread, or if I’m really being nice I use John’s 100% whole wheat bread that I don’t particularly like in croutons, but he does, and will eat any leftover croutons like potato chips. Make sure each piece of bread is coated, but not sopped, then shove the skillet in the oven and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Check frequently because if the croutons get too dark, they’re not so good—and you can be fooled by that really dark brown bread. I feel like it’s a personal failure when I blacken stuff—I think it shows my distraction.

In False Alarm, Kate’s mother, Virginia, had never been much for cooking, but still manages to take over and outshine Kate when she brings her new boyfriend, Barry, for Christmas.