Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. This week, we offer a tribute to moms — who are, after all, some of our favorite people.

Food is the love language in my family.

Daughter having trouble at vet school? Bring her up a spaghetti pie. Neighbor going through a medical emergency? Drop off some lentil stew. Annual family reunion coming up? Sisters, let’s work on that daily menu planning for 20 of us (or more).

And make extra. Because at our gatherings, we would never, ever risk running out of food.

And today, on Mother’s Day, it’s a good time for us to remember where it all started.

Sharing an apple

My mom, née Emilie Fonfara, was born at home in a small Western Massachusetts town in 1924, in time to be saddled with strong memories of what it was like to live as a poor child of immigrant parents during the Great Depression.

She told us stories of the family of seven — she had four brothers — taking turns bathing in a wooden tub with water heated by an open fire. Then they would sit around, covered in blankets, telling stories and sharing one apple or orange, whatever the family could afford.

Her father, a barrel-maker, had a hard time earning enough money to support the large family. At the age of 14, my mom dropped out of school so she could serve as the translator for her mother, who spoke only Polish, and to help care for her hardscrabble brothers, some of whom got jobs with the Works Progress Administration established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help the country recover.

From a young age, Mom had a knack for designing and sewing her own clothes, finding cheap fabric or reusing castoffs. She would model her dresses and gowns at Catholic church functions and parties at the Elks Club. Soon, word spread, and she was able to make a few extra dollars by selling her creations to help support her family. She would spend her days sewing and helping her mother cook: rosol (chicken soup), potato dumplings, pierogis, cornbread, whatever food was cheap enough to fill stomachs.

Her first paying job was at Chicopee Undergarment, a slip factory that manufactured military clothing during World War II and where she honed her sewing skills.

At 21, she met Joe Yucka — a handsome Polish boy back from fighting in World War II’s Pacific theater as a Marine — at a football game in their small town. In October 1948, they wed; she created her white velvet wedding gown. For their honeymoon, the couple took a train to the Big Apple so Mom could buy the gowns and accessories to start a shop, Emilie’s Bridal.

When dining out at a restaurant there, a waiter asked if she’d like a cocktail. “Yes,” she replied. “Fruit.” (I can still hear her laugh when telling that story.)

But that naive, first-generation Polish-American girl soon became a force to be reckoned with. In an era when few women started their own businesses, Mom charged ahead, tough as nails and determined.

Running a business

My childhood is filled with memories of Mom working 10 to 12 hours a day, then coming home to the house that my father built, a wedding gown spread across her lap for hand-sewing appliques, beads and sequins. She would claim that she made the time to feed her family, too, but my sisters and I remember her calling Dad, a firefighter, to give him instructions on how to make pork chops and potatoes in the pressure cooker, or chicken soup, or ground beef patties with mushroom soup, or asking him to pick up fish and chips from Schermerhorn’s market.

But around the holidays, Mom took over the kitchen, spending long hours making turkeys and hams, casseroles, golombkis, ham rollups (with pickles in the middle), sheet pans of apple pie (using fruit from our own trees), and trading with friends for their babka and borscht. She would take Easter baskets down to the Polish-Catholic church to be blessed, loaded with kielbasa, colored eggs and bread, and butter shaped in the form of a lamb, filling a small canning jar with holy water on the way out. And oh, the lavish Christmas buffets she would prepare so we could all gather around the tables when friends would stop by to celebrate.

And in 1975, after her first grandchild was born, “Mom” took on the moniker “Babci” — grandmother in Polish.

My sisters and I have dozens of Mom’s recipes in her handwriting, but when we compare them, they seldom match. We always thought she kept the real recipes to herself so she could one-up us all.

After I moved to Colorado in 1990, Mom would come out every year to be sure I didn’t starve (as if). She worried that I couldn’t find the food products that we enjoyed back home, so she would cart Blue Seal kielbasa, daisy ham, veal loaf and farmer’s cheese along with her. (I recall an extra-heavy, food-laden suitcase coming down the baggage chute at the old Stapleton airport, dogs in nearby crates howling over the scent of its contents.)

With Mom in charge, we would have pierogi parties, inviting friends to join in the assembly line to make balls of the filling (made the day before), roll out the dough, cut, stuff, pinch, seal, boil, butter, bag and freeze. (If you know, you know.) And we never could make just a few. Our record: 48 dozen pierogis. In one long day.

It’s a tradition my sisters and I have continued with our own children and grandchildren, and we brag after every marathon about how many we managed to make and the different variations we tried. (This year, in addition to the traditional potato and cheese, it was pulled pork and green chile for us here in Colorado.)

The dance ends

Right up until her late 70s, Mom was indefatigable, still kicking up her heels at weekly polka dances and taking bus trips with her girlfriends to Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. She became fixated on her favorite treats, among them chocolate chip cookies from Trader Joe’s and Magnum Ice Cream Bars from Stop&Shop, which she would buy in bulk and hoard. (After she died, we found a 2-pound box of Enstrom almond toffee that I’d sent her from Colorado hidden under her favorite lounge chair so my sister Jay, her watchful caretaker, wouldn’t find it.)

Mom stopped traveling in her early 80s, around the same time she gave up socializing. After major heart surgery at 85, her appetite and energy level waned. She stopped reading the romance novels she so adored, had no desire to cook, and lost interest in sewing or making the little decorated jars of candied nuts she had enjoyed passing out to friends.

Her hearing was bad, but she wouldn’t wear hearing aids. When she couldn’t understand what we were saying to her, she would just blow a kiss and mouth “I love you.”

In the fall of 2013, I flew east to visit and persuaded her to help me make Polish golombkis (also spelled golabkis or golumpkis, and pronounced “go-wump-kees) together. I can still see her arthritic hands rolling and wrapping the cabbage leaves around the mixture of meat and rice. She tired easily that day, but oh, the smiles, and the memories, and the taste of those delicacies.

The following April, after a fall at a rehab center, Mom was hospitalized and became confused, even delusional. To soothe her, my nephew Patrick, an ER nurse, put his iPhone right next to her ear, playing the polka music that she loved. And for a few minutes, she was back, snapping her fingers and shaking her shoulders, delighting us with that whooping laugh.

She died a few days later, just short of Mother’s Day and what would have been her 90th birthday, leaving us with a freezer full of pierogies and Magnum bars.

Mom, thanks for showing us what could be achieved with hard work and determination (OK, stubbornness), and for creating those family traditions that help us express our love for our families and friends through food.

Love you more.

Emilie Yucka’s Golombkis (Cabbage Rolls)

Makes a huge batch. Note: My friend TJ and I recently made these with cauliflower rice instead of white rice to make the recipe more Keto-friendly, and they were delicious. They also freeze well. Dobre jedzenie (good eating)!

INGREDIENTS

3 large heads green cabbage

2 pounds ground chuck or beef, 80/20 or 88/12

2 pounds ground turkey

2 pounds ground pork

1/4 pound salt pork or pork belly, finely diced

2 cups white rice, cooked

1 box rice pilaf mix (Near East or other brand)

2 or 3 large onions, diced

1 pound fresh mushrooms or 2 small cans, chopped

2 or 3 eggs, beaten

Salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste

1 cup ketchup, plus more for serving

3 10.75-ounce cans tomato soup, divided

1 24-ounce jar spaghetti sauce

DIRECTIONS

For the cabbage leaves:

1. Core cabbage and rinse. Peel off two outer leaves of each and set them aside. Boil cabbage in a large pot of water for 30 minutes or so to soften the leaves. As they wilt and become translucent, peel away and lift out the leaves with padded tongs and place on cookie sheets to drain. If the spines are thick, trim horizontally with a sharp knife.

For the filling:

1. Use the same pan for steps 1-4. Fry all the meat until brown. Drain and set aside in large bowl. Leave a small amount of fat in pan.

2. Fry the diced salt pork or pork belly until crunchy. Drain and add to bowl of meat, leaving a small amount of fat in pan.

3. Fry diced onions until clear and starting to brown. Drain and add to bowl. Leave a small amount of fat in pan.

4. Fry the mushrooms until liquid dissipates. Add to bowl.

5. Cook box of rice pilaf according to directions. Add 2 cups of cooked white rice and mix together. Add to meat mixture.

6. Add 2 or 3 eggs and ketchup, plus 1 can of tomato soup, and work into the mixture.

7. Add salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste. Mix well.

To make the golombkis:

1. Mix 2 cans of tomato soup with 1 large jar of spaghetti sauce. (You can always make more if needed.) Line a large baking pan with some of the set-aside, uncooked leaves, then top with small amount of the sauce mixture.

2. Fill cabbage leaves with meat and rice mixture, one at a time, starting with the largest leaves. Fold sides of leaves, one by one, into center, then turn over, folded side on bottom, and place on top of sauce in baking pan. Continue layering until bottom of pan is filled. Top with sauce mixture. Repeat the layers, adding sauce to finish. Top with any leftover cabbage leaves.

3. Cover with lid or foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 90 minutes to 2 hours (depending on number of layers). Discard burned layers on top.

4. Serve cabbage rolls with more sauce or just ketchup.