"What's Cooking Mother?"

I wish I could take credit for that title, but really it belongs to Kim Stafford--the son of the great poet William Stafford. And if I remember his story correctly, he got the line from a student who wasn't so good with punctuation. Stafford's point to the English teachers at his lecture was that a mere comma--or in this case the omission of one--can make all the difference. But what's got me thinking about this brilliant line over and over again all week is the incident inside my own very retro Kenmore stainless steel drop-in range.

It was like this: The oven was pre-heating in anticipation of roasting the beets which I had just scrubbed. Meanwhile, I was using my newly purchased mandoline to make pretty, uniformly-sliced to 1/8" thick sections of eggplant and zucchini. (Yes, I purchased this slicing tool with the express intent to use it on this recipe for Zucchini, Eggplant, and Tomato stacks from the Williams-Sonoma catalog.) I was having fun with my new toy when I smelled something metalic and very much unlike food burned onto the oven rack--which is what my olfactory senses are accustomed to observing when the oven is warming.

I opened the oven door to investigate and was immediately pleased to see that my husband had decided to clean the oven and surprise me! It was a brilliant hot-white. Absolutely glowing. So bright I had to shut the door before I blinded myself...

"Did you clean the oven?!" I queried.

"What...? No?...Why would I...What's that smell?"

What, indeed. The oven wasn't newly cleaned. The bright light calling to me through my oven wasn't heavenly, afterall. It was all too terrestrial; A Saggitarian knows fire when it dawns on her that her husband didn't clean the oven, and even if it were clean, it wouldn't glow like that! After turning the old nylon button to the off position, we opened the oven door to witness the baking element burning its last red ember.

Still unable to comprehend that an oven can burn itself out, I reasoned that the fire resulted from orange marmalade which had boiled out of the pear tart I baked a week earlier; there were suspicious black bubbling lines forming in several spots on the heating element. This must have seemed a reasonable explanation to my husband as well because he grabbed a spoon and began scraping at the black scar. At this point, the heating element snapped along with my motivation to make dinner.

Somehow, when the oven is on fire, everything else seems hopeless. What else is there to do at a time like that other than to feel sorry for yourself? So that's what I did. While I'm not so good at dealing with a sudden change in plans, I'm very good at sulking. So, I sulked, and sliced, and changed the menu to grilled veggies. While I sat across from the grill sulking still, I remembered Kim Stafford:

"What's cooking, Mother?" and I contemplated what happens when we take out that little unassuming comma and whether the result makes for a more interesting story:

"What's cooking mother?"

I think it does.