Allen Saxon

The New York Times 2023 Holiday gift guide features Heirloom-Quality wooden salad bowls made by a company in Vermont. My mother’s salad bowl has been in our family for approximately seventy years. I don’t recall if this bowl was an inheritance or a gift, but according to the Times it remains in style.

Rather than regarding this as a sad and somber reminder of a beloved family member lost to aging ( she passed away at 96), we regard this bowl with a smile and a sense of humorous irony. Simply put, my mom was a lousy cook. At a time when few women worked outside the home, she had her own career working in my father’s law office. She was a bookkeeper, secretary ( now called an administrative assistant), a receptionist, an advisor, and the go-to person on how to prepare and file legal documents. Even though she didn’t pore over legal texts, we now consider her the first paralegal due to the way she assisted my dad and his partners.

After working a full day, it’s no wonder she didn’t have time to develop her culinary skills. My childhood memories recall only her meatloaf, made memorable by the ketchup and brown sugar glaze she slathered over it, and the huge amount of cole slaw she would bring to family gatherings. In the pre-Cuisinart era it took her two to three days to shred enough cabbage.

She never lived down the derision when she tried to substitute a processed turkey roll for Thanksgiving instead of serving a well-prepared bird stuffed with all the trimmings.

My mother would never have been mistaken for Julia Child, but we remember her with a loving smile every night we serve salad from that bowl.