Sylvia - 4

More from that wonderful email from Sylvia:

On another occasion, Alan ordered mussels, another food neither of us had any experience with. The only thing she knew is that one shouldn’t cook dead ones. She poured the paper bag of live mussels into the bathroom sink and stationed me on the toilet seat with the job of culling out dead ones by poking them with the tip of a paring knife. If they didn’t close up they must be dead, and I was to discard them. Linge cooked the remainder of live ones. Of course, she didn’t know how to cook them, but had heard, perhaps from Alan, that they should be cooked quickly. She put them on a cookie sheet, popped them in the oven, and just as quickly popped them back out. She then put some of these barely dead and completely unadorned mussels on plates. I don’t think I could even eat one with their disgusting shiny, wiggly yellow sacks, particularly following my recent life and death encounters with them. I think she gamely ate two. The remainder met a more immediate dispatch than the tongue.

All of these stories are hilarious, considering that mom was a fantastic cook (except for the chicken, but that is another story).