Just like Mom's. Or better

When my sister was here, she made me some meat sauce and froze it. I grabbed some one night, made some ravioli, and had this amazing pasta. I figured I had just kinda hit the perfect combination of cooking time and textures and counted my blessings. A couple nights later, I made another pasta with the sauce, and again, it was out of this world. Then it hit me. It was the sauce. My sister makes incredible pasta sauce. Even better than my mother's. (In all fairness to my mother, I think part of what makes my sister's sauce so good is the onions - which my mother would love to use but never can because of my father's allergy. In all fairness to my sister, though, her sauce kicks ass.)

This is especially funny in my family because my sister was never a cook. Whereas I was actually interested in cooking and learning to cook, she couldn't care less. Her first year away from home, she ate cereal. And literally almost nothing else. Breakfast and dinner - cereal and cereal. The last year or two she's been cooking more, and is now a really good cook, constantly experimenting and trying new things. Still, the meat sauce surprised me.

As I was contemplating the sauce, I noticed something interesting. Her sauce is very different from my mother's. It's more tomato, and less meat. It's a thicker, creamier texture. It has a completely different taste. Then I remembered a night in January when I was at my sister's place and made a stirfry. She took one bite and said "omg it tastes exactly like mom's! I've been trying to get mine to taste like mom's and it never does. How did you do it?!" I had no answer - that's just how I make a stirfry. I realized the difference, that night of the second pasta, as I sat there staring at the penne stuck on my fork. I learned how to cook from my mother. Under her watchful eye. Watching her and then repeating the same. Verifying every step with her. Whether intentionally or not, my mother influenced every single step of my cooking process. While my sister always gets advice, recipes and steps from my mom, it's only ever over the phone - so she learned to cook on her own. Creating a completely different style.

As I was baking for Thanksgiving last weekend, my dad was sitting at the counter, watching me. He started laughing. "You bake just like your mother, and her mother before her. If you had learned to bake from my mother, you would be doing it completely different." My sister bakes and cooks in entirely her own way. Influenced by no one.

After I had that second pasta, I called my parents to tell them I liked my sister's sauce better than my mother's. My dad exclaimed "That's the way it should be!", taking some sort of paternal pride in what he saw as some sort of passing of the torch. My mom just laughed. She's just thrilled we're slowly but surely discovering the wonderful world of the onion now that we're free from the confines of my father's allergy. Me? I started rationing the pasta sauce and trying to find a time for my sister to come out to make me another batch before Christmas. I could get the recipe, but it could never be the same. And I only have 3 containers left.