SOME KIND OF CHRISTMAS FOOL

(The following, with some changes, was originally published in the Cookbook Collectors Exchange, in the Nov/Dec 1994 issue).

“When we were young, there were moments of such perfectly crystallized happiness that we stood stock still and silently promised ourselves that we would remember them always. And we did.” (From the “FOUR MIDWESTERN SISTERS’ CHRISTMAS BOOK”, published in 1991 by Holly Burkhalter, with Kathy Lockard, Karol Crospie and Ruth Bosley.)

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. (From “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott.

This is the wonder of Christmas,
Sleigh bells and holly and snow,
Church chimes and mittens and pine cones,
Warmth from a fireside’s glow.
This is the wonder of Christmas,
Trinkets bedecking a tree,
Tinsel and strings of cranberries,
Children, all shouting with glee.
This is the wonder of Christmas,
Merriment, loving and caring,
This is the wonder of Christmas,
The happiness that comes from sharing.
This is the wonder of Christmas,
See the manger, there, under the tree,
With small statues symbolic of all that
The Christ child would want it to be.

-Sandra Lee Smith

Hobbies come in all shapes and sizes. I have various friends and acquaintances who enjoy hiking, horse-back riding, camping, and/or bowling. Some people collect stamps and call it a hobby, although to my mind, collecting something takes it out of the realm of hobbying and into the jurisdiction of collecting. Or perhaps the two are synonymous. I consulted my trusty friend, Webster, and was advised that “A hobby is something that a person likes to do or study in his spare time or avocation”. Another rare definition of hobby offered by Webster is “A subject that a person constantly talks about or returns to”. I like the latter definition; it describes how I feel about Christmas. Christmas is my hobby.

Back in medieval times, preparation for Christmas feasting began months in advance even though the common folk might only a few hours away from their duties, working for the upper classes and royalty Christmas celebrations would last two weeks, until the Feast of the Epiphany, on January 6th. It’s said that King Henry VIII of England raised revelry to a new high—few kinds could party as hearty as Henry.

Curiously, however, most historians agree that it’s very unlikely that Jesus Christ was actually born on December 25th. There is an interesting book titled “Christmas Feasts from History” by Lorna Sass, (published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Irena Chalmer’s Cookbooks, Inc. 1981), in which the first chapter is devoted entirely to the Roman Saturnalia Banquet. Ms. Sass quotes the poet, Virgil, (70-19 BC) who described the Saturnalia as a merry festival that was the traditional culmination of the ancient Roman year. “Named for Saturnus, the Roman god of seeds and sowing, the celebration probably began to commemorate the end of the autumn sowing season in southern Italy, a time of brief respite from the yearly round of farm chores, a time to pause and exchange good will with neighbors and friends..”

Saturnalia began around December 17 and all work was suspended for seven days…“Romans took to the streets with carnival-like abandon, shouting ‘To Saturnalia”. Slaves were free to do and say what they pleased and a mock king was chosen ruler. Characteristics of what was to become Christmas were already in evidence: halls festooned with laurel leaves, gifts exchanged—often little dolls made of clay or dough—and small wax tapers lit as protection against the hovering spirits of darkness…the week-long festival reached its peak on or about December 25, a day set aside for special reverence to the sun..”

Early church leaders often attempted to substitute a Christian holiday for a pagan one and it is thought that Christmas became the substitute for Saturnalia.

(Personally, I have often speculated that Jesus was born around in March—I think it’s plausible that He was a Pisces, the sign of the fish – for the fisher of men). In any event, the early church habit of substituting pagan holidays for Christian ones does not detract in the least from what it is that we are actually observing.

In medieval times, the court jester, or fool, was often called upon to entertain guests while they enjoyed their meal, along with tumblers and minstrels, and other paid entertainers. Maggie Black, in her book “THE MEDIEVAL COOKBOOK” tells is that “Entertainment was the main part of any feast, especially a great one, and at the end when the alms baskets were carried out to the poor, and the last Twelfth Night toast was drunk, it was to be hoped that one and all could say “that was a good feast. The year ahead will go well!”

Centuries later, I find that I am some other kind of Christmas fool. I’m not likely to wait until Thanksgiving or after to start thinking about Christmas. It’s on my mind all year long.

My childhood Christmases are cherished memories. It seems that our holiday season began with the Feast of St Nicholas, on December 6th. We hung stockings (usually long white stockings of my father’s) and the next day found them filled with walnuts and tangerines and hard candies…sometimes a little toy. I had my own tangerine tree in Arleta, where we lived for 19 years and tangerines always remind me of the Feast of St Nicholas (I don’t remember ever having tangerines at any other time of the year, when I was growing up).

Many years later I had all but forgotten our family observation of the Feast of St Nicholas, part of our Dutch heritage, until one year when my sons were something like 8,5, 2, and 1 years old and turning into unholy terrors as Christmas approached and television commercials assaulted their impressionable little minds with the wonders and glories of toys that every-kid-just-had-to-have. The momentum continued to grow until I was ready to disown all four of them, whose every sentence began with “I want—“. Then I remembered the Feast of St Nicholas. We reinstated the tradition of stockings being hung on December 5th and observed this tradition for many years after. It was something to tide the children over until Christmas finally arrived.

Snow flakes. Pine needles. My grandma’s diamond shaped walnut and sugar studded butter cookies*. Grandma’s homemade pumpkin strudel (with Filo dough made from scratch!); A Christmas tree glowing with bubble lights. Weeks of rehearsing Christmas carols at school, which took on new meaning when I joined the choir. As a small child, the shivering anticipation of being allowed, one a week, to put away pencils and books, while we made cards and calendars and “tie racks” out of construction paper, library paste and cardboard tubes. On Friday afternoons, song books were passed out to the students and we learned the words to “Jolly Old St Nicholas” and “Up on the House Top”, “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night”. At home, we bought sheet music and learned the words and music to “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman”. I sang “Rudolph” with two clowns at a Christmas party sponsored by my Grandma Beckman’s club that year.

We took piano lessons and flute and clarinet, and practiced our favorite Christmas songs until everyone in hearing range was tired of hearing them. When we tired of listening to each other, my mother would sit down at our old upright piano and play “Silver Bells” which was, I think the only Christmas song she knew how to play. (My mother never learned to read music; she played entirely “by ear” and was really quite good).

I will always remember the Christmas that my older brother gave me five brand-spanking new Nancy Drew books—the first books of my very own. Such bounty! The first book that my mother ever bought for me was, incidentally, “Little Women”, which I practically memorized from reading it so often.

One year my mother was terribly sick in the hospital—but came home long enough to spend Christmas with us.

We children ironed the wrinkles out of the previous year’s gift wrap; we ironed out old ribbons too. We made our own gift tags out of index cards and those little glue on stickers—the kind that never stuck to anything else. (I wouldn’t say that we were poor, exactly, but we certainly were frugal.)

We did all our own Christmas shopping—my two younger brothers and I, making a once-a-year shopping excursion to downtown Cincinnati where we prudently shopped for cards of bobby pins or lilac splash cologne—or handkerchiefs with our daddy’s initial on them, or one of our favorites, “Midnight in Paris” which came in a distinctive blue bottle that we loved. We managed to see all of the Department store Santas (as much motivated by free candy canes as the desire to cover all our bases since you never could e sure which one might be the REAL Santa.) We carefully guarded our meager pennies against potential shoplifters we had been warned about, and somehow bought presents for our parents, grandparents, siblings and dearest friends. Most incredibly, we usually managed to have some lunch at the Woolworth’s lunch counter—a grilled cheese sandwich with dill pickle slices, and a coca cola, split three ways—was, I think, about twenty-five cents. I should add, we did ALL of our shopping in Woolworth’s, Newberry’s and Kresge’s five and ten cent stores. They had the best “stuff”.

(Once, my childhood friend Carol confessed that she had always been jealous of me on those shopping trips.
“Me?” I exclaimed. “Whatever FOR?”
“Because,” she replied, “You could buy so much more with a dollar than anyone else”)

Over the years I have thought long and hard about those shopping trips which, incidentally, also cost us five cents bus fare to and from downtown Cincinnati. How did we manage to do it? I often think of loaves and fishes in the bible. That was the three Schmidt children shopping for Christmas presents for at least ten people, not counting anything for friends. We always, somehow, managed to have just enough. And, let me add – we didn’t have allowances or anything that frivolous in our lives. Every penny was a penny earned or money from cashing in pop bottles for the two cent refund.

We loved downtown Cincinnati during the holidays, the lights of Fountain Square, the “living crèche” in Garfield Park, all of the sidewalk Salvation Army Santas ringing their bells, and the gorgeous window displays in all of the department stores.

When we got back home with our treasures, we smuggled everything upstairs to my bedroom where we engaged in a frenzy of wrapping. We often ended up at my grandmother’s on Christmas Eve day; eventually my father would arrive with his cousin – my godmother, Barbara, who I only saw during those holidays and always seemed to me to be something like a fairy godmother. We would pile into the car to go home; we would see the lit tree from the street—for we NEVER had a Christmas tree before Christmas—and seeing the brightly lit tree, framed by the living room window, we would just know that Christmas had arrived. We would rush through the front door only to be told by our mother that we had “just missed Santa—he just went out the back door” whereupon we rushed to the back door to try to catch a glimpse.

We’d open the presents handed out to us one at a time by my mother and later, if you could stay awake, you might be able to go to midnight mass with the adults.
What I remember most clearly about Christmas mass is the crèche—the statues of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, finally uncovered (for they had been draped with cloths throughout Advent.)

There was singing and incense and the smell of wet coats and gloves—for it seems that it almost always started to snow on Christmas Eve. The choir sang “Silent Night” and “Adeste Fideles” and “Away in the Manger” – and IF the Baby Jesus was not actually born on December 25, it matters not a whit for we believed in Him and we believed in His birth.

Christmas Day—when I was a young child—usually found us having dinner at my paternal grandmother’s—it’s a wonder to me that in later years when she lived in the two front rooms of the first floor of her apartment house, she somehow managed to fit all of us—my parents, siblings, two aunts, two uncles and various cousins ALL into those two rooms. As soon as we had eaten, my Uncle Al gave us each a quarter for the movies—fifteen cents for admission, ten cents to spend—and then would drive us all to the movie theatre. (We thought Uncle Al was rich—handing all those quarters out so freely!) and by the time we got back, everything would be brought back to the table for a late supper. (While we were gone, the adults all played cards. You knew you were “of age” when you were allowed to join the adults playing cards).

So, is it any wonder that the love of Christmas spilled over into my adult life? That we, in my household, think about Christmas all year long—beginning with the after Christmas sales but gaining momentum around in May when the first strawberries and blackberries ripened and could be made into jams and preserves, cordials and jellies. By August, the first Black Mission figs were ripening on our trees and the grapes in my arbor were slowly turning purple. Around in October, pomegranates turned ruby red and could be converted into pomegranate jelly or a luscious liqueur. Pumpkins began to be displayed at produce stands (and now my youngest son and his son—my nine year old grandson, Ethan—have taken to growing their own pumpkins). From the pumpkins we made pumpkin bread and pumpkin butter.

We searched for just the right presents for everyone on our gift list, all through the year, and I discovered that Christmas shopping while on vacation in July could be a lot of fun, especially if you were doing it with a sister. We were all catalogue buffs and carried bundles of Christmassy mail order books all over the house, dropping thinly veiled hints in our wake. By September, some of my packages had to be wrapped and mailed to meet overseas deadlines—so September was never too soon to drag everything out of the Christmas closet and do an inventory. I make up lists. Extra rolls of film (I DO still take photographs using actual FILM). Sugar and flour and jars of molasses go onto my list. Lots of scotch tape! (and WHAT do you suppose people did before Scotch tape was invented?)

I remember one year—in the 1970s, I think—when the price of sugar skyrocketed to something like $5.00 for a 5-lb bag of granulated sugar—even as I write this, the price sounds astronomical (even though a FOUR pound bag of sugar, on sale, now, is about $2.50). I hardly baked a thing that year and it was a terrible disappointment. For years after, I stockpiled sugar months in asdvance to safeguard against it ever happening again.

Sometime in August, maybe as early as July, I would be digging through cookbooks and recipe files, pulling out the favorite cookie and candy and confection recipes. October is not too soon to start mixing cookie dough, If you have a freezer to store it in and you have a lot of favorite cookie recipes. Some cookies can be baked well in advance—the ones that thrive on aging in a tightly fitted tin or Tupperware container—the Springerle and Pfeffernusse and cut out gingerbread cookies and those decadent rum balls. I try to get all of the cookies made a few weeks before Christmas, so that I can make up gift baskets and fill tins with cookies for neighbors and friends—and nowadays my favorite post office clerks and our mail lady, my manicurist and our family mechanic.
When Christmas is getting close, THEN it’s time to make the delicate Spritz cookies, lemon Madelines, and Russian Tea Cakes.

Back in the day – when my sons were growing up – we’d often make several dozen different kinds of cookies; they’d take them to school for their teachers, I’d take them to work for coworkers. We’d make fruitcake bars and peanut brittle, Mamie Eisenhower’s fudge, and English Toffee, and my favorite New Orleans pecan pralines, Sherried walnuts and my Aunt Annie’s Opera Creams, my sister’s Buckeye Balls, Truffles, Caramel Corn—and the family favorites; Kelly’s M&M party cookies, Chris’ oatmeal raisin, Michael’s Butter Cut Out Cookies

(*When Michael was five years old, I stayed up one night until about 4 am decorating each and every Butter Cut out cookie with frosting. I had them spread out to dry on every counter and table top. When I got up the next morning, Michael had eaten the frosting off every single cookie. I’m not sure what happened after that—but Michael told me years later that the sight of frosting on butter cookies made him feel slightly queasy.)

I believe it was that same year that Michael, then in kindergarten, questioned me persistently about reindeer.

“Mom,” he said “Can reindeer fly?”

“Hmm,” I hedged, “Well, I’ve always heard…certainly Santa’s reindeer—you know, Dasher and Dancer and then there’s Rudolph—why do you want to know, son?” to which he replied, matter-of-factly, leaving no room for doubt, “my TEACHER says they CAN’T!” and as anyone who has ever had a kindergartener knows, if teacher says they can’t, that’s the end of it.

When I was an 18 year old bride, in 1958, I clipped some cookie recipes out of a woman’s magazine and then into a 3-ring binder, and a tradition was born. Now, fifty-something years later, I have seven or eight 3-ring binders filled with JUST the cookie recipes, most clipped out of magazines. (I also began using those 3 ring binders for many other recipes as well—there are four or five just for my canning recipes—jellies, jams, chutneys, pickles, preserves, two for cakes, and so on. Now there are over 50 of those 3 ring binders stuffed with recipes.

We built our own memories, my children and I. We laughingly recall the year my husband & I stayed up until 4 am putting together a hot-wheels-type of racetrack that Michael, then about four years old, had dismantled by 5 am. There was the year that my girlfriend and I and our children made bread dough ornaments that didn’t quite turn out. We had bits of dough in our hair, clothing and all over the floor. (You may have discovered, as did we, that not everything turns out quite like the magazine illustrations, does it?)

One of my favorite stories involves my dear friend, Neva. She wanted to make a candyland house with me one year, such as I would make using a cardboard frame taped together to look like a cottage. Then I would liberally spread the exterior of the house with royal frosting and decorate it with small candies before the frosting dried. (Writing about how I made the candyland houses was one of the first articles I sold to Tower Press magazines). It would be some years before I worked up enough nerve to actually make a real gingerbread house. Anyway, Neva wanted to make a candyland house too – except for one thing – she wanted to make hers a castle. (it actually went with her house that looked somewhat like a miniature castle). No problem, I assured her. We could make a castle. I whipped up batch after batch of royal frosting, running around the house digging up cardboard tubes and digging through kitchen drawers for suitable accessories – while Neva, her daughter and my sons constructed and decorated a castle. It was truly an impressive work of art but I confess to being nonplussed when, some weeks later, the local Valley News ran a story (with photographs!) about Neva and her candyland castle, which – according to the newspaper story—was her “family tradition”.

One year when we lived in Florida, I was tearfully distraught trying to make one of our favorite Christmas cookies – like lace cookies, which wouldn’t harden, or stained glass cookies – that dripped away the stained glass part as they hung on a tree. I also set the oven on fire trying to make graham cracker houses (which we had made successfully in California) because the melted sugar wasn’t hardening. I had a vague notion that putting them into the oven would help them dry out. Instead, the melted sugar dropped all over the coils of the electric oven and caught fire.

Somewhere along the way I began collecting Christmas ornaments. Like Topsy, it just grew and grew, until the time came when we needed a second tree for all the ornaments. I began searching for ornaments where ever I went on vacation and more than once found a Christmas store. My favorite one is in Carmel California. The store is filled with year-round trees decorated with ornaments made by local artisans. Some of these are my absolute favorites.

One year my sister and I were there oohing and ahhing over the ornaments.

“Will you take a check?” I asked the owner.
“Of course,” she replied.

“Do you need to see some identification?” I asked.
“No,” she said, complacently, “Christmas people don’t cheat.”

These are some of my stories; if I thought long and hard I could come up with many more—but I want to tell you about some of my favorite Christmas cookbooks. As you know, I collect cookbooks – and possibly my favorite topic in my cookbook collection are the Christmas cookbooks – along with cookies. A few years ago, a friend set up a database for me and I managed to get all of the Christmas cookbooks logged on before we had to move. There are over 500 of them. But some are really FAVORITES—the cookbooks I turn to, year in and year out. If you need to get into the holiday mood, I guarantee that reading Christmas cookbooks will get you there. Maybe you can write to me and tell me about your favorite holiday recipes or your favorite Christmas cookbook!

I like THE FRUGAL GOURMET CELEBRATES CHRISTMAS and MYSTIC SEAPORT’S CHRISTMAS MEMORIES COOKBOOK; There’s MARTHA STEWART’S CHRISTMAS, (with directions for creating a gingerbread mansion) and 365 WAYS TO PREPARE FOR CHRISTMAS. I like John Clancy’s CHRISTMAS COOKBOOK and A YANKEE CHRISTMAS by Sally Ryder Brady; ROSE’S CHRISTMAS COOKIES by Rose Levy Barenbaum, and my beloved LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK OF CHRISTMAS ENTERTAINING by Dawn Navarro and Betsy Balsley. I love re-reading Mimi Sheraton’s VISIONS OF SUGARPLUMS and Virginia Pasley’s THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE BOOK (1949).

I need to mention the Farm Journal’s HOMEMADE COOKIES compiled by the Food Journal’s food editors and published in 1971—back when I didn’t have hundreds of cookbooks, this was my favorite go-to cookbook for baking Christmas cookies. (In fact, we collected all of the Farm Journal cookbooks back then. I think it was my penpal Penny who got me started on those).

Years ago, the Junior League of the City of Washington published a book titled THINK CHRISTMAS (originally published in 1970 but often reprinted); the Junior League must have done well with their first effort since in 1983, they published JOY OF CHRISTMAS, both filled with great holiday entertainment ideas. One of my well thumbed and spattered Christmas cookbooks is titled TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, compiled in 1974 by the Junior Women’s Group Pioneer Museum up in Stockton, California. I no longer remember where or how I found my copy which was already well worn and spattered when I acquired it – I DO know I have been making their recipe for Spinach Delight for over thirty years. Another favorite is THE GREATER CINCINNATI CHRISTMAS COOKBOOK compiled by the Greater Cincinnati Citizens Council in 1984; my sister Becky learned about it and we both invited to submit recipes—we both sent in many of our favorite Christmas recipes, congratulating ourselves for finding a way to get them all in one book. Of course, one downside to all of this is that some of your favorite recipes have a tendency to change from year to year. In 1984 I was making Texas fruitcake and “five pounds of fudge” while in more recent years I find myself reaching for the recipes of my youth—the Lebkuchen and Springerle my grandmother would make, or those wafer-thin Moravian Ginger cookies and Pfeffernusse.

More up to date Christmas cookbooks that you may want to search for might include CHRISTMAS WITH PAULA DEEN, published in 2007 by Simon & Schuster, or The Goodhousekeeping little book THE GREAT CHRISTMAS COOKIE SWAP COOKBOOK, published in 2008 (and offering 60 large batch recipes to cook and share) or you might want to look for a Favorite Brand Name 100 BEST HOLIDAY COOKIES published in 2007 by Publications International—both of these cookbooks are well illustrated with hidden spiral binding so they will lay flat on your kitchen counter.

Personally, I don’t like having cookbooks in the kitchen so I usually copy the recipe on my printer and stick it on the refrigerator door when I am baking.
Another 2007 cookbook is SANTA’S NORTH POLE COOKBOOK by Jeff Guinn who also wrote THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SANTA CLAUS, HOW MRS CLAUS SAVED CHRISTMAS and THE GREAT SANTA SEARCH.

These are a few of my favorite Christmas cookbooks—there are so many more! And amongst my treasures are pamphlets and leaflets published by the various gas companies in many different states—some of these were very well done and are so collectible!

And then there are all the gift-giving cookbooks and candy-making cookbooks!
But I see this post has grown very lengthy! However, before I close I wanted to let you know about previous “Christmassy” posts on my blog.

Look for –

Christmas is Right Around the Corner 9/13/09
Homemade Christmas Candies 9/20/09
Oh, Fudge! Making Christmas Candy 9/16/09
Make Mine Light – Fruitcake 10/1/09
It’s Christmas Cookie Time, posted 11/22/09
Christmas 2009 Cookies 12/31/09 (PHOTOS)
MEMORIES OF CHRISTMASES IN CINCINNATI (ARTICLE) 12/9/09
A Few of my Favorite Things, Part 2 Cookies 12/16/09
Christmas Memories 2010

Happy cooking and happy cookbook collecting—
Sandy

FOR MY GODSON KEVIN

FEBRUARY 18, 1991, My godson, Kevin, accidentally shot and killed himself.

Recently, I came across the tribute that I wrote to my friend Penny, for her son, Kevin. “He had so many friends,” she wrote at the time, “No big problems—he had friends from little kids to old people 70 years old and older. He’d sit and talk to them and really enjoy their company. He had the largest service this town has ever had – over 400 people came to his service and there were so many flowers….from the day he was born I had this ‘unreasonable’ fear that something was going to happen to him and spoke of it to several people. Often it would come over me, out of the blue. I see now God was trying to prepare me that I wouldn’t have him long…”

So, I wrote this tribute for Kevin because I was a mother of sons, too.

FOR KEVIN

There are no simple answers.
There are no easy words.
Words come hard. Thoughts come and go.

From the time we bring them into this world, we are constantly in fear of and worry about the greatest of all our fears, that something, sometime, might happen to this child. We are struck dumb over stories of children being bused and battered by their own parents, and we ask ourselves how on earth anyone could do anything so cruel and heartless to their own child.

When they are babies, we watch them breathe and we listen for the slightest “wrong” sound in the night; we are up in a flash when they begin to cry. We encourage them to crawl and we hold our arms out to catch them when they take their first steps. We walk the floor with them when they are feverish and we rush to the emergency room with them when they break an arm or a leg playing baseball or soccer or basketball. We let them crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night, when they have had a bad dream. We hold them close and breathe the damp sweaty smell of their hair and we chase away the bad dreams.

We turn the pot handles on the stove around and we put covers on the electrical sockets and we lock up cleaning supplies and we put up little wooden gates in the doorways.

We let them out of our sight, sometimes, because we know we have to do that to let them grow and we heave a sigh of relief when they return unharmed. We warn them of the evils in the world, constantly, and our warnings fall on deaf ears for they are convinced that they are invincible. We tell them not to speak to strangers and to look both ways before crossing and how to handle a pair of scissors, and not to play with matches.

But they talk to strangers and they don’t always look both ways, and sometimes they handle the scissors by the wrong end and sometimes they light matches to watch them burn. They know that nothing can touch them.

We take them to little league games and band practice and we go to PTA meetings and teacher conferences. We walk them from house to house on Halloween night because it is no longer a world safe enough for them to go alone, and while they welcome our company when they are five or six years old, they chafe over having us along when they are nine or ten, far too old to have a parent walking alongside. But we tell them it’s our way or no way and they ungraciously concede defeat. Really, what could happen to them? They are invincible.

We go to open house and we admire their drawings on the wall and we stand foolish and open-mouthed over a teacher’s recitation…sometimes glowing, sometimes not so glowing.

We go looking for them if they are more than five minutes late getting home from school.

We fret with them over every test and we suffer with them learning multiplication tables and fractions and decimals.

We think we could say in or sleep did you do your homework, did you take a bath, did you wash behind your ears, did you pick up your towel, are you wearing clean underwear? And they say aw, mom, I’m not a baby. And then we drive to school half an hour later to deliver their homework or their lunch money or their science report.

They take driver’s ed and they drive too fast and eat too much junk food and sometimes they experiment with alcohol and smoking cigarettes. We lecture them on chewing their food and on brushing their teeth and eating the right foods and clogging their arteries with carbohydrates. They say aw, mom, and go right on doing whatever it is they were doing that we warned them about. They are, they know, invincible.

They acquire, along with baseball cards and Hot Rod magazines and their own telephone, their own TV and stereo system and several hundred cassette tapes of something loosely defined as Heavy Metal which they assure us is music but we are convinced is a plot to impair the hearing devised by hearing aid manufacturers throughout the country.

They acquire friends of the opposite sex and our heart does flip flops the first time they take a girlfriend into the bedroom and close the door. We find ourselves stuttering and stammering, explaining birth control. Condoms.

We hear ourselves sounding like our own mothers, when we open our mouths and start talking about what nice girls did or did not do ‘ in our day”. We were never going to sound like our mothers. Aw mom they tell us, they know about Trojans. They know what they are doing. Nothing can happen. We worry too much.

We hear other mothers bemoaning their offspring, hoping they will hurry up and grow up and get on with their lives, and we think they are crazy, because we aren’t ready for our offspring to hurry up and grow up and get on with their lives. People think we are crazy because we enjoy having them around and harbor secret dreams that they will stay with us for years to home.

Now, here we are. It’s come to this.

All the turned pot handles, all the incantations, the warnings, all the covered electrical sockets, all for —–

We stand on top of a hillside and we scream to the heavens. We cry to this child who no longer hears anything.

Why didn’t you listen?

Why weren’t you more careful?

And somewhere on the wind comes a faint whisper, aw, mom, you worry too much.

Nothing can touch me now

–Sandra Lee Smith

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD BOOKS

Let me share with you a few thoughts about old friends and old books.

Years ago—when I was young and cute and the mother of only two little boys instead of four, I was working at Weber Aircraft when I found myself suddenly in need of a babysitter. A friend suggested her neighbor, a woman named Connie, who herself was the mother of three young children, the youngest a boy the same age as my son, Michael. (Remind me to tell you some time of all the mischief those two five-year-old-boys would get into!)

Connie became my babysitter and more importantly, a close friend. She was godmother to my youngest son, Kelly, when he was born. Connie and I shared so many interests that it’s impossible to say which one was the most important—and we shared a love of books. One of our interests focused on the White House and anything Presidential; one time we bought a “lot” of used White House/Presidential books, sight unseen, from a woman somewhere in the Midwest. I think the books cost us about $50.00 each and when they arrived, we sat on the floor divvying them up. We shared a love of cookbooks and began collecting them at the same time, in 1965, although Connie was a vegetarian and leaned more towards cookbooks of that genre. She was also “Southern” and shared with me a love of “anything” Southern. We shared a love of diary/journal type books and books about the Mormons—and religious groups that formed in the United States in the 1800s.

It was because of Connie that I started working for the Health Plan where I would be employed for 27 years—I only went to work “part time for six weeks to help out”, and there I was, years later, retiring the end of 2002 with a pension. My job literally saved my sanity when I went through a divorce in 1985.

My oldest son and her youngest started kindergarten together, and her oldest daughter lived with me for about six months, as a mother’s helper, when she was in high school.

In 1999, Connie died of lung cancer. It seems incongruous that someone so devoted to eating healthy should die of such a terrible disease.

One night, some months later, Connie’s oldest daughter brought three boxes of books to the house, explaining that it had taken a long time to go through her mother’s collections—many of her books were divided up amongst her children and other friends, but there were some that Dawn thought I would especially like.

After Dawn left, I opened the boxes and began laying the books all over the coffee table and chairs. Books about the White House – some I had never heard of before! I wish I could have had them when I was writing about cooking in the White House kitchens year ago–Intriguing titles such as “DINNER AT THE WHITE HOUSE” by Louis Adamic, memoirs of the Roosevelt years, published in 1946, and “DEAR MR. PRESIDENT; THE STORY OF FIFTY YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE MAIL ROOM” by Ira Smith with Joe Alex Morris, published in 1949.

There is a Congressional Cook Book – #2 – and a very nice copy of “MANY HAPPY RETURNS or How to Cook a G.O.P. Goose”, the Democrats’ Cook Book which was the inspiration for an article that appeared in the March/April 2000 issue of the Cookbook Collectors Exchange. There were several books about soups that I have never seen before. One was “THE New York Times Bread and Soup Cookbook”, another “The ALL NATURAL SOUP COOKBOOK”.

More books about Southern cooking – a few duplicates but others I was unfamiliar with, “RECIPES FROM THE OLD SOUTH” by Martha Meade, a copy of the “GONE WITH THE WIND COOKBOOK” – actually, a booklet – which was given away free with the purchase of Pebeco Toothpaste which is long gone from the drug store scene while “Gone with the Wind” is as famous as ever.

My friend and I drifted apart some years ago, after a difference of opinion –we remained friends but were not as inseparable as we once were. She made other friends and so did I.

But I was deeply touched that some of her treasured books came into my possession. Running my hands across the covers, I imagine that Connie had done the same thing, many times, dusting them, touching them. For in one aspect, if no other, we were kindred souls. We loved books. I still do.

***

MEMORIES OF THIS OLD HOUSE

This old house is made of brick
And has been standing about a hundred years;
It’s a three-storied house
With a big basement
That had a wine cellar
In one of the rooms,
A cellar where my grandfather
Stored his homemade wine
Made from the grapes
Grown on his hilly back yard.
There are a lot of rooms in this old house
Where my grandparents raised
Three children
And where, when their children married,
Apartments were created on the first and third floors
For the married child and his or her spouse
And their children, as children were born.
My parents lived in this old house
For nine years,
Until I was almost five
And they were able to buy their own home.
But much as I loved that home,
Nothing could ever compare
With the memories in this old house,
That belonged to my grandparents.
My grandparents resided on
The second floor
When I was a small child,
And could sit in the rocking chair
By the kitchen window
On my grandfather knee,
Watching my grandmother
Make doughnuts.
Later, my grandmother
Would take up residence
On the first floor, front rooms
And rent out the rest of the house;
I spent many nights with my grandmother
In those two rooms
Where at night
We had a cup of hot tea
And saltine crackers
With real butter.
This old house
Holds many memories
For many people,
And now it is
An Assisted Living home
For disabled adults.
If we can no longer live in
This old house,
Perhaps it is a good home
For those disabled adults
And if there are any ghosts
In this old house
They can only be the friendly spirits
Filled with memories
Of family members who lived there
For so many decades.

–Sandra Lee Smith

For This Old House at 1925 Baltimore Avenue

MY GRANDMOTHER’S KITCHEN

Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete – Marcy DeMaree.

My paternal grandmother, Susanne Gengler Schmidt, was the acknowledged great cook in my family. My grandmother was German and my grandfather Hungarian. We grew up with all these dishes and delicacies that we lumped together as “German food”; it wasn’t until I acquired some Hungarian friends as an adult living in California that I discovered that Grandma’s thin crepe-like pancakes (which we called ‘German pancakes’) were actually Hungarian Palacsinta.

My grandmother made huge pans of strudel with homemade tissue-thin filo dough, using whatever was in season for the filling. She had some sour apple trees so there was often apple strudel but we also enjoyed cherry, cheese, and even a spicy pumpkin strudel that made an appearance in the fall. She made a chicken broth with ‘rivvels’ – tiny little dumplings and with it we would often have a homemade bread crusted with kosher salt (appropriately dubbed salt bread). Her goulash, I learned, was more Hungarian than German and generally didn’t contain much more than stewing beef, potatoes and carrots.

We enjoyed chicken Paprikash and Wiener Schnitzel and liver dumplings. We all loved the homemade sausages (once a year my grandparents butchered a hog and made a lot of sausages. The hams were smoked in a converted section of the garage).

The one thing I hated (but everyone else enjoyed) was Hasenpfeffer made with wild rabbit that my father would have caught going hunting a few times a year. I don’t remember Grandma ever making this dish but my mother certainly did. It was the bane of my existence in my childhood, to come home from school and the smell of sweet and sour rabbit cooking on the stove wafted throughout the house.

My grandmother always made her own noodles (from scratch!) to go with these dishes and it was not an unusual sight for a grandchild to come running in to Grandma’s and find noodles drying on the backs of all the wooden chairs.

Sometimes there was Sachertorte and sometimes Dobos torte. I think we all loved the Dobos torte the most – seven thin layers of sponge cake with layers of bittersweet chocolate frosting between each layer; the whole thing encased afterwards in the same chocolate frosting.

My grandmother often made doughnuts and on the Feast of the Three Kings, you could expect to find a coin – a nickel or dime – inside your doughnut.

Most of my grandmother’s recipes died with her – she never wrote anything down…but
her youngest daughter in law wanted to learn from Grandma and stood by her elbow watching, repeatedly, to see how things were made. My Aunt Dolly is the only person left who remembers how some of these dishes were made. Amongst my mother’s recipes, I found a recipe for Dobos Torte written by Aunt Annie (Grandma’s daughter) and addressed in the corner “Dear Vi” – my mother.

One of my best memories of sitting at the table with my grandmother didn’t involve an elaborate meal, however. Often, when I was spending the night with her, we would have tea with lemon and some buttered saltine crackers as a snack before going to bed.

To this day hot tea and lemon and some buttered crackers are one of my favorite comfort foods.

When I was a very young child and my grandfather was still alive, Grandma’s kitchen was on the second floor, at the back of the house – with a window overlooking the back yard. I have memories of sitting on Grandpa’s lap while we sat in his rocking chair, watching Grandma make doughnuts—which were undeniably best when hot and sprinkled liberally with sugar.

On summer nights, we all sat outside on the second floor front porch, waiting for the ice cream man to come up Baltimore Street. No TV! No radio! Just sitting and talking and cooling off after a hot summer day.

My grandfather enjoyed, I recall, a dish made up of cooked potatoes, noodles and eggs— that he liked to eat with milk, but I have never seen a recipe and have never quite duplicated it. It might have been something thrown together with leftovers…or maybe you needed homemade noodles to make it right.

He also smoked a pipe…and once, when my mother was very sick – long after Grandpa had died – she sensed a presence by her bed and smelled pipe tobacco.

The Christmas before Grandpa died, I remember him lying in his bed. Grandma and Grandpa gave me a baby doll for Christmas in 1949; I named the doll Susann, after Grandma. Grandpa passed away in February, 1950.

After Grandpa died (I was 9 at the time) Grandma moved to two rooms on the first floor of her house on Baltimore Avenue. She took the two front rooms and rented out the two back rooms (we shared a bathroom with the tenants). She was then able to rent out the entire second floor to another family, while my uncle Hans and Aunt Dolly and their sons lived on the third floor until they were able to buy their first home. Grandma had a kitchen and a combination living room/bedroom with a trundle bed to accommodate a visiting grandchild. The hub of activity was always Grandma’s kitchen.

I went to Grandma’s once a week to spend the night – starting out some time in grade school. I continued this weekly visit all through high school—until I got married, and then Becky and her children and Jim & I would go to Grandma’s for dinner on Monday nights.

When we were all young children, it as considered a great privilege to go downtown with Grandma. She bought most of her produce at Findlay Market and patronized a butcher shop that was in the area of Findlay Market. We carried fresh vegetables home in oilcloth bags that Grandma made on an old treadle sewing machine that may have been grandpa‘s before he died. He was a tailor.

It was only in later years that my siblings and I, along with our cousins, realized that one of Grandma’s greatest gifts to all of us wasn’t in her cooking – delicious though it was – but rather, in her ability to make each and every grandchild feel special. We each grew up believing WE were grandma’s favorite. It wasn’t something she ever said – it was something each of us felt.

She was our anchor; she went to bat for you. She’d stop whatever she was doing to make you a chicken-and-lettuce sandwich, first going out to her garden to pick some fresh leaf lettuce…she would take you downtown with her, to see a movie and maybe get a grape juice drink and a hot dog afterwards. She’d make hot tea with lemon, and you’d have that as a bedtime snack, along with butter and crackers (real butter—Grandma didn’t believe in oleomargarine). She loved to travel, to see things—whether it meant traveling to Niagara Falls with a carload of grandchildren or getting on a streetcar and making a Sunday trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. (My brother Jim thinks we must be part gypsy since we all love to travel and move around to different parts of the country).

I can remember a few occasions of becoming sick at school and at least once two older school girls walked me up the street to Grandma’s. Grandma put me in her bed with a hot water bottle and gave me an Alka Seltzer; then I curled up sumptuously on her bed, dozing while I could smell the cotton cloth of clothing being ironed, and hear Grandma’s daytime radio soap operas, like Stella Dallas.

My brother Bill tells a hilarious story of the time he and our cousin Johnny, one hot summer day, found a tool in Grandma’s basement that Johnny figured would turn on the water faucets at the Junior High school up the street. The two boys went up to the school and turned on all the outside water faucets. They were having a wonderful time dancing in the spray of water as it flooded the parking lot, when they noticed police cars and fire trucks ascending the hill to the school. The two boys quickly turned off the water and taking a back trail, hurried back to Grandma’s, where they sat (completely drenched) on a side step. Of course, the police and firemen arrived, having been advised by other children that Billy and Johnny were the culprits. When the authorities approached Grandma, she would have none of it. Brandishing her broom, she insisted “her boys” (although dripping wet and looking mighty sheepish) hadn’t left the property all day. After the police and fire department left, Grandma shook a finger at the two boys. “Don’t either of you DARE to leave this yard for the rest of the day” she warned. And they didn’t.

My sister, Barbara recalled that applesauce making was a family project in which everyone was put to work. Even small children could help peel the apples—although the actual cooking of the sauce was left to grandma and her daughter and daughters in law. (When there were too many apples or maybe Grandma had her fill of making applesauce, a grandchild would be sent down the street with a wagonload of apples to give to the nuns at St. Leo’s, our parish church).

What I do remember about the canned applesauce is that, during the War years, it was made sans sugar. We had jars and jars of applesauce in the cellar, long after World War II was over, all of it made with sour cooking apples, none of it sweetened. You sprinkled a little sugar and cinnamon on the applesauce as you were eating it.

Joyce Brothers wrote “Becoming a grandparent is a second chance for you have a chance to put to use all the things you learned the first time around and may have made mistakes on. It’s all love and no discipline. There’s no thorn in this rose”. (From “A TRIBUTE TO GRANDMOTHERS”. And now that I’m a grandmother myself, I know this is all true.

The following recipe for Dobos torte is in Aunt Annie’s handwriting. Aunt Annie was Grandma’s only daughter. Here then, is Grandma’s recipe for

Dobos Torte

You will need:

12 TBSP sifted cake flour
12 TBSP sugar
12 eggs (separated)
½ tsp vanilla extract

Beat egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy. Fold in flour, a tablespoon at a time. Then add vanilla. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites last. Pour about 5 TBSP in each 8 or 9 inch cake pans (that have been greased and floured). Bake 10-13 minutes at 350 degrees. This should make about 12 layers.

Icing for Torte:

½ lb butter (2 sticks)
1 box powdered sugar (1 lb)
3 TBSP unsweetened cocoa

Cream together and moisten with black coffee to spreading consistency.
~~~~
The Wilton Book of Classic Desserts offers recipes for Dobos Torta and Sacher Torte (amongst others). To make the Wilton Dobos Tort you will need

1 recipe Genoise*
2 recipes uncooked chocolate butter icing**
2/3 c. sugar
1 c. coarsely chopped almonds or hazelnuts (optional)

Butter well and dust with flour the bottom of three 8” layer cake pans, buttered, lined with waxed paper, then buttered again and dusted with flour. Spread 3-4 TBSP of Genoise batter in each and bake in 400 degree oven for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Carefully remove from pan and peel off paper. Place cakes on racks to cool. Repeat until all batter is used and you have 8 to 12 layers.

Place a layer on a cake plate, spread with icing and cover with a second layer. Repeat until all layers are used. Do not ice top layer. (reserve about 1 cup of icing for side of cake.)

Melt the sugar without stirring in a skillet until it carmelizes. Spread this quickly on top of cake with a hot knife. Mark the cake into serving portions with radiating lines like spokes of a wheel using the hot knife. Ice the sides of the cake with the chocolate icing and if you wish, press nuts into the iced sides. Chill 12 to 24 hours before serving.

*To make Genoise (delicate butter sponge cake)

You will need:
6 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 CUP sifted flour
½ cup clarified butter, melted and cooled***

Combine eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl and stir till just combined Set bowl over saucepan containing 1” to 2” hot water (water should not touch bottom of bowl). Place over very low heat for 5 or 10 minutes or until eggs are just lukewarm. Stir mixture several times to prevent it from cooking at the bottom of the bowl.

When mixture feels lukewarm and looks like a bright, yellow syrup, remove from heat and beat at high speed for 10 or 15 minutes or until it has tripled in volume and draws out in ribbon form when a spoon is pulled out of it.

Sprinkle the flour, a little at a time, on top of the whipped mixture. Fold in very gently. Then fold in the butter. DO NOT OVERMIIX.

Pour the batter into well buttered pans dusted lightly with flour, and bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until cake pulls away from the sides of pan. Remove from pans immediately and cool on rack. Makes two 9” layers, three 7” layers or one 11”x16” sheet.

**To make the uncooked chocolate icing you will need:

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3 TBSP hot water
1 ¼ cups sifted powdered sugar
1 egg^
¼ cup soft butter
1 tsp vanilla

Melt chocolate in top of double boiler; add hot water and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and blend in the sugar. Add egg and beat until smooth. Add butter a little at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla.
Makes enough icing for 2 layers or 24 cupcakes

^This recipe precedes salmonella in eggs. Suggest you use the equivalent of one egg in egg beaters as a substitute if you don’t want to chance using raw egg.

***To make clarified butter:

Place any amount of butter in a deep pan. Melt over very low heat and continue cooking until the foam disappears from the top. The liquid butter must not brown. When the butter looks perfectly clear, remove from heat and pour through a sieve lined with cheesecloth into a container, leaving sediment in the pan. (if only a small amount is being made, simply pour off the clear butter, leaving the sediment in the pan). Clarified butter, well covered, will keep for months in the refrigerator. It is pure fat from which all solids and water have been removed.

Sandy’s Cooknote: Aunt Annie’s recipe may be a lot simpler but I have provided all the instructions provided in “The Wilton Book of Classic Desserts” that I have “rediscovered” on my bookshelves. The book was edited by Eugene an Marilynn Sullivan and published by Pine Tree Press for Wilton Enterprises. My copy has a 1970 copyright date.

What makes the book remarkable are the many classic desserts – such as Dobos Torta or Sachertorte and breaks the directions down so that even a novice cook can follow the instructions and make a successful dish. I’ll tell you more about the book another time, if you are interested.

This is as close as I can get to providing an authentic recipe that was made, often, by my grandmother—I can’t remember the cake ever being round, though – in my memory, Grandma made the sponge cakes in loaf pans and the finished cake of many layers was a medium loaf pan size.

Happy cooking and happy cookbook collecting!
Sandy