According to the Urban Dictionary, beautiful chaos means someone whose life and/or personality are hectic or chaotic. When you have long defined yourself and your output as a “hot mess,” this positive reframing is welcome.

Tidiness and order do not come naturally to me. I am sure this deficit in me is attached to a trauma-filled childhood. Parental modeling has to be another. My mother’s aunt raised my mother to believe: “If you don’t learn how to do housework, then you’ll never have to do it.”
That view seemed fairly short-sighted on great-aunt Grace’s part, then and now.

I believe my great-aunt Grace was preparing my mother to live a life above her birth station. What it accomplished was a domestic incompetent who was inordinately proud of being so. Mom may have secretly suffered for her lack of housekeeping and cooking skills, but like many other things, she made a joke out of it.

“Cooking,” she would say, “is like murder. You only have to do it once to be one.” In her back pocket, she had but a handful of “go-to” recipes on the few occasions that I remember her making a homemade meal. “Joni marquette,” for example.

Joni marquette was an elevated moniker for a tasty dish of ground beef, macaroni, and a can of stewed tomatoes. Easy to throw together and admittedly tasty. In moderation.

But if there was a meal to be made and Mom was the only person available to do it, joni marquette was likely the main course. I later discovered that “joni marquette” was actually based on a US-Italian recipe called Johnny Marzetti. The Wikipedia article on the origin of the dish is an interesting read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Marzetti

The joni marquette entree was occasionally followed up with a dessert dish Mom was fond of making. We weren’t especially fond of it, but no matter. If dessert was called for, floating islands are what we got. That dish was prepared much like one would make meringues.

You know the crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside cookie confection of soundly whipped egg whites, infused with sugar and vanilla, and baked to golden brown perfection. A French derivation and specialty made popular by French cuisine superstar Julia Child. In French, they are called oeufs-a-la-neige. (eggs on clouds) https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/19050/floating-island-oeufs-a-la-neige/

Mom’s variation was to make the beaten egg white base with sugar as directed. She would then carefully ladle individual “islands” into a warming milk bath in a frying pan to cook. And voila. Floating islands.

To me, there was something vaguely off-putting about floating islands. It may have been their squishiness. Sort of like marshmallows but not nearly as firm and awash in milk. They felt funny in your mouth as if you were chewing on sweet foam. Maybe they weren’t so bad when I think back. Maybe it was their frequency as Mom’s “go-to” dessert that rendered them vaguely unappetizing.

Mom’s lack of domestic skills was a great source of humor for her. She often touted Dad’s skills around the house as being well above her own. He had been a bachelor practically forever when they met and married so was well familiar with domestic necessities.

Dad could cook and enjoyed it. He was also a little guilty of overdoing the “one-dish I’m good at.” In his case, it was cod au gratin. He would buy a large piece of cod – preferably fresh – and mix it with what I now know as roux. That is a flour, milk, and butter-based white sauce that he made extra thick and seasoned with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

He would pour this mixture into baking dishes I now know are called ramekins. He topped each ramekin with about an inch of sharp shredded cheddar cheese. Then he popped the ramekins in the oven until the cheese melted and the fish and roux had heated sufficiently. Pretty good eating.

But a little like Mom’s joni marquette, Dad’s cod au gratin was served excessively. Seems the mindset was that if you have a winning recipe, why deviate from it? A generational thing maybe.

My cooking adventures have been a combination of both parents’ approaches. I have a few “go-to” standards but take great delight in experimenting a little more than they did.

Of course, now if a new dish I am making doesn’t work out exactly like the picture on the New York Times recipe page, I am happy I no longer have to describe it as a “hot mess.”

What you have in front of you, I will say, is my own self-curated special dish, Beautiful Chaos. Would you care for some more?