“Immaturity and hair dye keep me young.”
I’m repeating the title of this post for a few reasons: First, everything clever is worth repeating. It usually gets a good laugh – one of life’s giddiest pleasures, especially at my age. It’s true and unabashedly honest. It sums up what’s to follow – the announcement that I turn 70 in a few days. And last, it’s original.
Top photo: My mother, Ruth Schachter, in her NW London garden in 2014
Bottom photo: Mum in 2015, after her serious fall, with my daughters Ruthie (L) and Esther (R)
A couple of months ago, a woman called Barbara Scharf contacted me by email from her home in the U.S.
This appeared as my column “Dish” in the Toronto Star in 2002.
Today is Mother’s Day and this is a tribute to the person who first inspired my love of food and cooking – my mum.
I call her “mum” because of the formative years – from age four to 19 – I spent living with my parents and two brothers in London, England.
I often joke with my mum that she’s the antithesis of a Jewish mother.
“You never write, you never call,” I’m wont to say affectionately during phone conversations I nearly always initiate from my home in Toronto to hers in Primrose Hill: the elegant, celebrity-studded, north-west London neighbourhood where she’s lived for almost 20 years.
My mother Ruth Schachter (nee Nisse), age 88, is one live-wire.
She reminds me (and others) of the cute little old lady in the original “Ladykillers” starring Alec Guinness and a young, dashing Peter Sellers. White-haired and blue-eyed, that sweet, seemingly innocent, slightly scatter-brained octogenarian is far more savvy than she looks. ‘Nuff said.
U.K. – In January, 2009, I wound up my annual trip to London to visit my mother with dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s newest restaurant York & Albany located at 127-129 Parkway in my favourite neighborhood, Camden Town.
When I was growing up, my job at dinnertime was to set the table and make the vinaigrette for a salad my nutrition-conscious mother served with each meal. It was your basic version: 2 to 3 parts olive oil to lemon juice or vinegar sometimes with a little mustard whisked in, salt, pepper and, mum always insisted, a good pinch of sugar.
Whenever I cross the ocean to visit my mother in her lovely North-West London neighbourhood of Primrose Hill, we set out for dinner on our first or second night together to the wondrous nearby Greek restaurant called Limonia. Always packed, it is a local favourite with celebs and regular folk alike.
