Festive Meals

I'm not a cook. Oh, I can put together a decent meal, but I don't enjoy baking or fussy preparation. For company meals I rely on getting the best ingredients I can afford and cooking them simply and carefully. I still recall with both annoyance and amusement deciding to look up and fuss with a meatless dish when the daughter of some neighbours became vegetarian. I found a fairly simple stuffed red pepper recipe, sweated over it but got it to turn out and presented it to the teenager, only to have her announce that she did not like red peppers, only green ones. The next time her family came to dinner I made sure to have lots of salad and bread and vegetables on the table -- 'But what's for me?' she whined. Her mother gave her The Look, which meant that I did not have to do so.

My husband says that for me gourmet cooking is a new prepackaged mix. True enough to be funny. True enough that I find it most surprising that both my daughters have turned out to be excellent and creative cooks. The YD, especially, is amazing. She invited the family for Easter Dinner, got a recipe for rack of lamb out of a magazine -- one which involved a cooked breading and making the Frenched rack stand up 'guard of honour' style -- and produced a perfect result. First time. She does this fairly often, zooming off to the grocery store with cookbook in hand and pulling it off. I would no more try that than I would enroll in the astronaut program. She also served crème Brule at her Easter dinner party, using her father's propane torch to do the Brule part. It was marvelous.

The ED taught me to use a wok some years ago, and I really rely on my microwave for vegetables and sauces, but other than that I cook a lot like my mother and grandmother cooked (plus mixes; pie crust mix, for one). At Chez G we still eat stuff like meatloaf and Apple Crumble and pork chops with gravy, all either my mother's or JG's mother's recipes. My festive meals often involve roasting something. I am terrified to cook shellfish.

JG's maternal grandfather was a baker and his mother learned the art of cake decoration. My mother always made boiled frosting, which rarely turned out, but Mrs. G produced birthday cakes that were works of art. She once arrived here with such a cake when my parents were also visiting, on the ED's birthday. Not expecting her to have brought a cake, my mother and I had laboured together to produce a sad lumpy specimen which had to have one side propped up with a cookie, a failing which the frosting signally failed to disguise. When Mrs. G swept in and produced her masterpiece, we hid our sugary glob in the back of the pantry and did not bring it out until the other cake was crumbs and memory.

However, my inadequate cakes are now only a memory because I have mastered the art of light, spreadable icing which will disguise almost anything. And, yes, I will share it with you. In honour of the maple syrup season, which has not started yet this year due to the whole county being in a snowed up deep freeze. You see, this recipe takes real maple syrup. No substitute works as well. You need: 6 tablespoons of butter and 6 of maple syrup. Warm to slightly above room temperature and cream them together. Gradually add 2 cups icing sugar. Ice cake while frosting is still a bit warm and chill the iced cake to set it. This frosting will work for piping and lettering too. If you colour it, add another tablespoon of icing sugar. It's sugar and fat content are, um, high.

I learned this out of necessity as Little Stuff has a nut allergy and all festive cakes have to be home made. But it works consistently for me and, believe me, that's amazing. All I have to worry about is getting it onto the table without dropping it or setting Little Stuff on fire.

Requiem for a Way of Life

Painted Maypole asked for an obituary for today's Monday Mission. It's a bit skewed, maybe, but here's my take on it.

When I was a little girl, no older than you are, my grandmother used to call me 'Little Stuff'. My mother and I used to go and visit her and my grandfather, driving in our own car, over 100 kilometres to get there and as much to get back, just for the afternoon. My mother's car was one of the first electric ones -- almost everyone else drove cars with gasoline or diesel engines like the ones you saw in the Museum of the Twentieth Century last month. My mother's car was grey and everyone used to laugh because it didn't make any noise when she started it. Well, because the gas and diesel motors made a big noise when you turned them on, like RRRRRrr.

I liked to visit my grandmother because she had a little swimming pool in her basement. It wasn't very big, not like the big pools that you've seen in pictures, but it was really warm because it was inside and the water was heated with electricity. And it had a thing like a boat propeller in the front, with a grill over it, and when she turned it on the water would move fast and she could swim in one place. I loved that pool so much! My grandma would make the water go fast and I would sail down the pool with a floatie and my grandma and I would laugh a lot. And it was always warm. Just think, there was so much electric power that my grandparents could use it like that.

You'll learn in school when you're older about how using all that electricity was a bad thing, and how it made the air dirty and how the gasoline and diesel engines in the cars were bad and used up all the fuel, so now we are more careful and we don't use too much. But when people used all that fuel all the time, things were different than they are now. Just think, we had strawberries all year round. They grew them in different places and big airplanes --not like the balloon air cars -- that could go very fast, well, those airplanes brought food from different places all around the world, all the time. Fruit you don't know about now, like kiwis, and meat from a place on the other side of the world called New Zealand, and pears from Israel on the other side of the ocean. A long, long way. We had blueberries all the time, too. I loved blueberries. My grandpa used to eat the squishy ones for me, like I do for you. Only we bought them at the store. In the winter.

I went in an airplane when I was your age and we went all the way from here to Vancouver on the other side of Canada, for a month, because your grandma and grandpa had work to do there. Just for a month. And we got there in just a few hours on the plane. We don't have that kind of plane any more because it took too much fuel to run it and it made the air dirty.

Well, you know what happened because the air got too dirty. The weather got really bad and there were floods and people drowned. Whole cities went under water, or part of them did. And the weather got warmer, too. There was snow all winter, when I was your age, lots of it, and it was white all the time. One winter there was so much snow that the piles were up to the second story windows in the house where I lived and the snow completely blocked my grandma's garage door, where she kept her car, and my mother had to dig it out for her. And I climbed on the snow piles and slid all the way down.

Are you finished your snack. Good. We can go outside now and you can help me in the garden. Only you have to be careful to just pull up what I tell you. We need the weeds to come out and the vegetables to stay or grandma won't have any soup next winter. Okay? Why am I crying? I'm really not. Just remembering, and the sun got in my eyes for a minute, okay? It was very wasteful, that world, and my grandma was bad to use all that electricity, but I really loved that pool.

Lack of Resolution(s)

I don't make New Year's resolutions any more. I used to do so. Many years ago I used to start out each January with a list of things that I would do and things that I would stop doing. A long list. Which quickly curled at the corners, gathered dust and ended up under the couch with the half eaten jelly beans and broken red crayons. Noticing that this was not A Good Thing, I began to make shorter lists with more doable things on them. I would then delay the start of the good deeds and denials for unassailably logical reasons such as: well, the Christmas candy is gone but it is only three weeks until Valentine's Day and I will get lots more then, so I will begin the diet/exercise program on March 1st. It is easily possible, given a little determination, to forget all about the New Year's Resolution List by February 28th. I assure you that it is.

Being forcibly reminded of the chocolate generated spare tire and inflated derriere by the commencement of the bathing suit season, I could reasonably decide to make a new set of resolutions to take effect, entirely logically, after the end of the berry and sweet corn season when giving up sprinkles of sugar and gobs of butter would, of course, become easier.

Early in October, when failing to do up the zipper of the heavy weight trousers retrieved from storage, I would, of course, realize that dieting/eating sensibly was of no avail because, so close to Thanksgiving, I should wait until after the holiday dinner when it would, miraculously, be too close to Christmas and the essential obligation of eating the treats of the season to bother. Easier to buy some new trousers.

At present I am avoiding the scales, the mirror and most of my wardrobe. 'Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,' as they say. My mouth is full of delicious Christmas gift chocolate as I type this. My BIL gave me Turin Bailey's filled chocolates. My husband gave me chocolate truffles. The ED put a Lindt bar in my stocking. The eldest grandson contributed a chocolate filled chocolate log. (Absolutely marvelous!) Could anyone suppose, even for an instant, that I would blithely begin, on January 1st, to count my calories, join a weight loss group or even eat more sensibly? As far as I can see, my only recourse is to pig out on this heavenly fare until it is all gone, and to do it as quickly as possible so that the increased curve of my tum and bum do not settle in for a long stay.

If you do not think this is a credible course of action, I do not want to hear it, okay?

For those of you who want me to come and tidy up for you, I would be glad to do so. That is, after I deal with the Christmas stuff, which is still in a pile in the doorway of my laundry/sewing room because I have to clean the storage room and there is no room in the laundry room because of the pile of unironed Christmas tablecloths and the mending which has been accumulating since (blush) last January. No exaggeration.

If I had a list of resolutions, these items would be on it, along with the bathroom shelves and under sink cupboard, the drawers in my night table and the unfinished Christmas present for Little Stuff which I now have scheduled to be finished for her birthday. In May. But, of course, I do not have a list. Or if I do, it is in the knitting basket with the size two sweater sleeves.

Hey, procrastination is an art form. It takes a lot of work to do it right.

Post Christmas Inventory

Turkey carcass: one, dumped in the bush to give the coyotes and wolves a Christmas treat. (I couldn't face making soup this year!)
Turkey meat: three bags full. In spite of what the family lugged home Christmas Day. (JG ordered a 22 lb bird and got a 23.2 lb one. It did look impressive but, boy, was it heavy to lift.)
Gravy, dressing and cranberry: many plastic containers thereof.
Salads: some got eaten. There is a lot of coleslaw boxed up somewhere in there.
Whipped cream: ditto.

Dessert: After the family packed their spoils I still have: half a pumpkin pie; half a mince and pumpkin pie; half an apple pie; most of a chocolate torte cake; most of a fruitcake; two containers of Christmas cookies; three boxes of chocolates; assorted chocolate goodies including an untouched chocolate log; five calling birds, three French hens ……….no, wait, stop that!

I am holding a Dessert Party this evening. I have invited the neighbours. Got to get rid of some of this calorific pelf.

I won't get started on the cheese leftovers list -- we're eating that, too, by golly.

Just to mention -- Little Stuff's face when she hauled the stuffed moose out of its bag was priceless. She now has it at her house and her mother says she has rigged up a harness for it out of Christmas ribbon, to pull it with because it is too big for her to carry. But she assures her mother that it is a housebroken moose.

Little Stuff also got an Island Princess Barbie from Santa Claus. It has a turquoise dress with sparkles and a peacock fan. She and her mother bought one of these early in December to give to an 'Angel Tree' child and Little Stuff was enthralled with it. When she asked for it as her Santa gift, her mother was unable to find the identical doll but I was able to pick one up. I was assigned the task of making an additional outfit for this doll, and so I very carefully extracted her from her packaging. But when I picked her up, she started to sing, causing me to lift two feet off my sewing table chair. The wretched toy has a necklace that, when depressed, starts the 'Island' song in a shrill and garbled voice.

Needless to say, Christmas day was a bit noisy. Little Stuff would pop into the kitchen and depress the stud. Grandma would say 'Get that thing OUT of here!' Little Stuff, consumed with giggles, would then return to the living room and repeat the process, whereupon Daddy would say 'That's enough singing!' and she would swing back to the kitchen, depress the stud………………..! !!! Finally her other grandmother took pity on the cooks and distracted her.

The turkey was marvelous -- tender, moist and full of flavour. Big turkeys do cook better, says the voice of over forty years' experience. But even forty years of garnering leftover recipes is not enough.