You Can't Have a Father's Day Without Mothers

 

My mother-in-law Marian (Mimi) Maxfield and her sister Virginia (Ginger) Bauman in the place they love best, their kitchen.

So I know I said I was taking Father's Day off, but sometimes a good post just won't wait.



Some of the feast after some of the menu had already been removed.

It is an understatement that my mother-in-law Mimi Maxfield and her sister Ginger, with whom she lives, love to cook for large numbers of people.

They have huge Thanksgiving feasts, double digits for Easter, Christmas meals that go on for days, they host many a birthday celebration and, it
 seems, for Father's Day as well.

Their father is long gone, of course, but that hasn't stopped them.

The baked goods table was hit hard.

Never women to believe that anyone should leave their house hungry, or without a bags of left-overs, they tend to over-cook to forestall any shortfall.


Chicken salad, shrimp, salmon, cream cheese...

But when a few of the expected guests cancelled for their Father's Day brunch, what was left was a feast to tickle the fancy of any fatherly glutton.

I will probably miss something, but to the best of my ability, this is the menu for a total of 11 guests:

• Two quiches: one broccoli/cheddar/bacon and one Swiss/vidalia onion;
• Three breakfast casseroles: Egg/bacon/cheese, potato/hashbrown/eggs/onion, egg. mushroom/sausage/cheese;
• Baked ziti;
• Smoked salmon, capers, cream cheese and bagels;
• Sausage gravy and biscuits;
• Fruit salad;
• Banana bread;
• Coffee cake;
• French toast
• Poppy seed and blueberry muffins;
• Bacon (of course);
• Chicken salad with grapes and almonds;
• Shrimp cocktail;
• Three pies: apple, strawberry rhubarb and Florida orange chiffon
• Apple and orange juice and coffee.

Total number of father's present?

Three.

To quote The Wiggles: "Fruit salad, yummy, yummy."

Those fathers -- myself, my brother-in-law Tommy and Ginger's son Jeff -- graciously allowed the others to taste the feast prepared in our honor if for no other reason than because getting your stomach pumped is no way to spend Father's Day.
And it occurred to me that left to our own devices, most dads would just let Father's Day slip quietly by, with maybe a nice treat at the end of the day or taking time to indulge in a hobby, or maybe take the family for a nice drive.

But sometimes, some mothers are just not willing to let that happen.

After all, without mothers, we couldn't be fathers.

Now I know part of this belly-swelling tribute has to do with the need these two mothers have to feed their young, both by blood and by marriage.


Florida orange pie.

They are accomplished cooks and bakers. The fruits of their labors are in demand at holiday time and at craft shows.

They have even managed to convince my 14-year-old to clean their windows in exchange for a pie. (There are times when I suspect my son would thrive in a pie-based economy...)

But no matter that some of their own needs are being satisfied by doing unto others, let me tell you that being one of the others has its benefits too.

It was, needless to say, a very fulsome Father's Day.