My mom had Julia Child and 'The Fannie Farmer Cookbook' on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes.
Lemon curd is one of the first things I remember cooking when I was old enough to use the stove without supervision. I looked up a recipe in my one of my mom's Martha Stewart cookbooks and went to work, stirring anxiously and monitoring closely for signs that the mixture was thickening so as not to curdle the eggs.
Growing up, I was aware of the kids-don't-like-vegetables trope, but it didn't make much sense to me. I never had any choice; all the traditional Iranian dishes my mom cooked teemed with herbs and vegetables.
I remember my mom had a big collection of copies of Saturday Evening Post magazines, and that was really my introduction to those great illustrators.
I had a lot of energy, and my mom decided to look for a place where I can spend the energy, because I was jumping on the couch and furniture, and I was jumping on the top of the things in the house.
I grabbed my mom and I went to the couch and I said, 'Mom I want to ask Jesus to come into my heart.' And I got on my knee and I asked Jesus to come into my heart, forgive me of my sins, and make me a child of God.
My father still is a lawyer, and my mom was a teacher and then later a career counselor.
All of us kids ended up 'doing Mom.' There are four of us who've tried show business. Five if you insist on counting my sister the nun, who does liturgical dance.
I have asked my mom and my sister a couple times if I should post something or not. Or if they think a video is funny.
I'm not gonna be broke, like my mom was broke, my uncles were broke, my sisters didn't have money, my cousins on down.
When I was a kid, we'd go crabbing, as a lot of folks do on the East Coast, and we'd catch some fresh crabs and take it home, and Mom would turn it into this unbelievable crab gravy - or, as they say, sauce.
My mom, the fabulous Bertie Kinsey, is an amazing seamstress. She quilts and sews and is so crafty. We call her the Southern Martha Stewart!
I actually had a really nice guitar as a teenager. I took jazz guitar, so my mom bought me this probably $1,600 guitar. But I got really into garage rock and local bands, and I noticed they played really crappy guitars. So I thought, 'Hey, I should get a crappy guitar, too!'
I grew up in such a musical family, and my dad was the first chair in the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and my mom was a piano teacher and a painter, so it was kind of a creative environment, and it was kind of in my DNA.
When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa, and every payday she'd pay a little toward the purchase.
'Blood Feast' is my favorite of Lewis' films. When we shot 'Serial Mom,' and I showed them the infamous tongue scene, one of the female crew members said, 'I hate when a guy does that.'
My mom used to always play hip-hop around the crib, but moreso than that, she played reggae, and I grew up on reggae music more than I grew up on hip-hop.
It's only a certain amount of days your friend's mom is gonna let you stay at they crib without feeling some type of way. So I'd stay two or three days, then they mom would be like, 'What's up with him? He got to leave unless he gonna pay for something.'
If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It's what you learn.
Becoming a mom forced me to re-prioritize and make room for the things that are most important, while recognizing that there are things I can let go of, and the world won't crumble around me.
