Indiana.

I was so happy to be home to celebrate Mother's Day with the ladies of the family: Mom, Nana, and my brother's girlfriend, Jess. Last year I had to Skype in from Dubai (boohoo, I know), and so it was sweet to be able to give her a hug this year.

Mom had all three of us by the age of 24 and then spent the next 22 + years of her life cooking, cleaning, going to band, athletic, and academic competitions, and hosting sleepovers for what felt like every last child in the school district. After 27 years, she and Dad still make me feel as special on my birthday as I did as a 5-year-old. Mom is the best cook, she has a perfect, giant smile, and her laugh is the most contagious one you'll ever hear.

Happy Mother's Day, Momma. Maybe someday I'll return the favor(s) with grandkids.

I also very happily spent the day with the men in my family: Dad and the twins, Matthew and Tyler.

It's always a little chaotic when we all get together, but I am so thankful that we have the opportunity to sit around a table and pass food to one another, all happy and healthy. I know this isn't always going to be the case, and I try not to take it for granted.

As a mid-twenty-something-year-old woman, I really should take command of the kitchen when home, but in truth, my brothers are far more qualified. Dad says that when I try to cook I usually create a "family memory that we can laugh about for years to come." Le sigh. He's right. So on Sunday morning, M&T whipped up breakfast sandwiches, Jess poured mimosas that were more champagne than OJ, and we feasted.

After breakfast, the parents and twins headed out into the woods to do a little mushroom hunting. Morel mushrooms, when coated in flour and egg and then fried in butter, are a Midwest delicacy. They remind me of fried oysters, if that helps any Southerns reading, and they're "hella" good, if that helps anyone else reading.

Poppa in his overalls

I spy a petite Matthew

I spy a teensy, tiny Ty guy (hint: look for the red)

Dad again, can you find him?

I was wearing my standard uniform while home: a giant t-shirt of Dad's and Mom's crocs, so I traded the threat of poison ivy on my legs for some play time on the wood pile.

Count the rings?

I got tired of playing alone, so while the rest of the family was out in the woods, I threw on some pants and talked Jess into hopping onto a bike and riding down to the crick with me. I tell ya - cricks are a thing where I'm from.

We live on a gravel road, so bike riding is a little bit treacherous. Gravel roads are superior, though, because you can do these incredibly dramatic stops, sliding and leaving a little cloud of dust behind you as you break. Theme song-worthy stops.

I told Jess stories about how, when we were little, the boys and I used to stand on one of the two bridges on either side of our property and toss things down onto one side of the river and then run to the other side to see whose object (usually a stick) would come out first on the other side. Simple folk, those Kings.

When we got back, Jess headed out to meet up with Matt and see how the mushroom hunting was going. 

The search was fruitful and the hunters came in with a small but sufficient load. 

We all migrated to the garden. Ty clipped fences posted for vines.

Matt...I don't know what Matt did. 

Matt and Ty set up an arched fence for vines over which the melons and cucumbers that Dad and I later planted would grow. As you have surely noticed, fashion is at the forefront when on the farm.

I was wandering around, exploring, and lo and behold, there it was: rhubarb. Stalks of beautiful, red, sour rhubarb.

It was a fine example of Pavlovian conditioning: I saw rhubarb; I instantly thought of rhubarb pie. I thought of rhubarb pie; my mouth started watering. My mouth started watering; I ran indoors to see if we had all of these supplies to make one.

We did.

I won't even try to claim this: I cheated and used a frozen crust Mom had tucked away in the freezer.

And the chopped, frozen rhubarb I found sitting right next to it.

I found a recipe online and threw it together, crossing my fingers that it would be edible. 

Because despite my best efforts, I sure wasn't going to get pretty out of it. 

No final pictures because it was inhaled. Warm, sweet, tart, crusty, and buttery - perfection. If you haven't tried rhubarb pie, you really, really must. Second only to tomatoes fresh from the garden, rhubarb pie is the taste of summer.

Jess doesn't seem to have the same deficiency in the kitchen that I do and so she started making avocado fries to snack on while we threw together lunch. She made them for my family the very first time she came to the farm - when I met her - and I never forgot them. So, three years later, I requested them again. Happy anniversary, Jess! 

It's an easy recipe, but it takes patience. Carefully cut however many avocados you'd like in half and scoop them out of the skin, removing the pit and making sure they stay intact.  Assemble a row of breading ingredients: flour, egg, and, if you like it, coconut.  

Cut the avocados into slices. Each half should make five to six "fries."

Move the fries through the assembly line, dipping them first in flour, then egg, then coconut. 

They'll look like this. 

Then, fry them in hot oil (Jess used canola) until the breading is crispy. We dipped them in ranch dressing, but they'd also be excellent in a chipotle mayo or something else spicy and creamy. Amazing, right? Is your mouth watering yet? I ate as many as I could while still trying to leave room for the rest of the meal. The struggle for self-restraint.

Matthew took over the grill and threw on seven huge steaks from the butcher.

Is there a sight more beautiful?

Nay.

Lunch was a complete win. Everyone contributed something (Matt's steaks, Jess's avo fries, my rhubarb pie, bread, and baked potatoes, and Ty's giant, green salad).

Later that day, after the boys left to head back to school and Mom, Dad and I were laying in the front yard on a blanket in the sun, the neighbors stopped by with the cutest little surprise ever: their grandson. Such a doll. We gave him a cupcake, leftover from the party the day before, and his little mouth was as blue as could be.

And isn't he filthy? A true farm boy, he had spent the afternoon chasing his ducks.

Once they left, mom prepared the mushrooms. She made them in the same way that Jess had done the avo fries, sans coconut. I would once again like to stress that these are fried in buddddda.

They might not be pretty, but they are sinful. They have such a short season each Spring and they can be so hard to find that you don't get more than a little taste each year, which allows for them to remain a bit legendary.

It gets harder and harder to leave each time I go home for the weekend. Home such a getaway for me - a chance to escape from the pace of the city. I've transitioned fairly well into this new life of mine, one far from the pet pony and gravel roads and strawberry patches of my youth, but there's something about bare feet in the grass and Mom's cooking and crickets chirping under clear, starry skies that I can fall right back into every time.