She’d use a cookie cutter to make shapes in pieces of bread, then lay them out on a tray with mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, and fancy toothpicks. In between the bread slices, we’d put whatever was left in the refrigerator from the previous nights of cooking. It took me years to clue in to the fact that “smorgasbord” was really just “leftovers.” My mother had a way of making even the ordinary seem exciting.
