Moms' skills inspire children to share family cooking

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Come Mother's Day, 17-year-old Andrew O'Sullivan wakes up, goes outside to gather pastel-colored eggs from chickens at the family's Chehalem Valley farmhouse, and then heads for the kitchen.

He cracks some eggs into his homemade pancake batter, slips others into simmering water to poach, and lays slabs of bacon in a pan to sizzle on the stove.

Like countless youngsters across the country, Andrew performs the ritual of cooking breakfast for mom on her special day. But for Andrew and other children whose moms are professional chefs or restaurateurs, May 11 is a day to reverse roles in the kitchen and celebrate family cooking.

"He likes to get up and go into the kitchen and turn on the music and do it on his own," says Andrew's mom, Claire Archibald. An award-winning chef who owns Cafe Azul in Portland with her sister Shawna, Archibald looks forward to her family's annual late-morning American meal.

"To have something that is kind of traditional, to me that's comforting and a nice way to start the day," says the chef, who specializes in creating regional, traditional Mexican cuisine.

Andrew admits that cooking for a chef can be "a little intimidating because you're measuring yourself up against them."

He says that as a youngster he wanted to impress his mom but soon realized that just "taking the time and effort to cook impressed her more than if I were trying to create some really fancy dish."

He adds: "As I grew older, I realized it really didn't matter much what I was cooking. What matters is that I am wanting to cook for her, to make that day easier for her, to make that day more pleasant."

These days, Andrew enjoys squeezing in more kitchen time with his mom, a two-time nominee for the James Beard award for best chef in the Northwest. "She's taking me under her wing," he explains, given his interest in learning to cook before heading off to college.

Unlike Andrew, the youngsters in chef Jody Adams' house in Somerville, Mass., don't often do the same thing every year.

"They'll surprise me," says Adams, chef-partner of two Boston restaurants, Rialto and blu, and 1997 winner of the Beard award for best chef in the Northeast.

Her two children, 13-year-old Oliver and 7-year-old Roxanne, are no strangers to the kitchen. Oliver makes the school lunches and Roxanne helps out with kitchen tasks such as peeling and cutting vegetables. She also likes to cook with Adams' husband, writer Ken Rivard and co-author of Adams' first book, "In the Hands of A Chef."

"I cook with my kids if they're interested. I don't want to impose that world on them if they're not interested," says Adams.

The celebration varies, depending on Adams' work. Years ago, she worked Mother's Day brunch with her baby on her hip. Last year, the kids surprised her with breakfast in bed.

"I wasn't allowed to get out of bed," remembers Adams. "They made really weird scrambled eggs" that came with a bottle of ketchup because that's the way they like it and a bowl of Cheerios and a glass of milk.

A surprise meal is also in the making for Bev Shaffer, only her son is 25 years old. Shaffer is the cooking-school director and cooking teacher at Mustard Seed Market and Cafe in Akron and in Solon, Ohio. Her son, Ray, lives next door to his parents in Seville, Ohio, and enjoys cooking for them several times a month.

"It's a great way for me to spend time with her," says the younger Shaffer. "It's something we both enjoy doing."

"I grew up in an ethnic family and cooked with my mom all the time," Ray's mom says. "I think Ray wants the same thing passed down to him."

Childhood allergies prevented Ray from eating packaged foods so he and his mom baked, cooked and made jams together. "She started teaching me how to cook because she knew I would have to be able to cook in order to survive," Ray says. "I ended up outgrowing my allergies but I still have that love of cooking."

Ray specializes in Asian and Italian food and enjoys making his own version of pasta sauce with port wine.

The Shaffer family, like many, agree that cooking together and sharing good food is an important part of everyday life and not only for special occasions.

"There's an incredible amount of communication that happens around food," says Deann Bayless, the immediate past president of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs. "It's the thing that sparks communication. When you're cooking with them, kids can open up more because you're not sitting across from them, staring them in the eye."

Bayless co-owns the celebrated Chicago restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo with her husband, award-winning chef, television personality and cookbook author Rick Bayless.

They try to cook a meal together with their 12-year-old daughter Lanie once a week. "The sharing of food is the most wonderful thing there is and to make it is a wonderful thing," says the mom.

Sharing breakfast before a busy day is another ritual in the Bayless household. So it's not surprising that when it comes to Mother's Day, the first meal of the day is the one Lanie likes to make for her mom. Typically, it's a Dutch Baby, a skillet-sized oven pancake that rises and falls like a popover. Lanie fills the sunken center with fresh fruit and syrup and a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

No matter what rituals families have on Mother's Day, most moms would agree with chef Adams when she says: "I've never felt that Mother's Day is about pampering mom. It's about the celebration of my children. I feel really blessed and honored to be a mother."