My father never met a meal he didn’t like. His famous line was “this is the best meal I ever had” no matter how simple it was. He complemented his wife Jane at every opportunity, and insisted on eating anything burned, especially toast.

But this is about my mom. She is the patient one, the quiet one, who was often in the background of an exuberant man. Make no mistake, she let her presence be known. She is extremely intelligent, well read and articulate. She always laughed at his jokes and silliness. I remember lying on the couch laughing until I cried as we made up word games, crazy quotations and naughty sayings.

My children were always amazed when they looked into Gramma Jane’s refrigerator and there appeared to be no food, well, prepared food anyway. She would say, “Are you hungry?, well, let me whip something up, “no really, you must be hungry.” After a short amount of time, there would appear at the table a delicious meal made from eggs, cheese a little pasta and some fresh vegetables. The table was set and we sat down to conversation and wonderful food. My children sometimes look in my refrigerator and say, “let’s do a Jane”, or “you did a Jane”, which means, let’s use what we already have.

One of the favorite additions to dinner was a refreshing and tasty cucumber and yogurt salad, a reminder of our time in the middle east. It is known as Tajiki in Greece and cacik in Turkey

The recipe:

2 medium cucumbers

1 tsp. sea salt

a good pinch of sugar

2 cloves garlic (peeled and chopped)

1 tsp. mint

1 3/4 c. strained yogurt

2 tsp. ice water

Method:

Peel cucumbers

Cut in 1/2 lengthwise and cut each 1/2 into 4 again lengthwise , then cut across at regular intervals so you end up with small cubes. Sprinkle with salt and sugar and let stand for 10 minutes. Pour excess water off cucumber and with your hands squeeze any moisture from the cucumber. Beat the garlic with the mint into the yogurt together with 2 tblsp. of ice water. Stir in cucumber, dice, chill well.