Adventures in Hazardous Holiday Cooking

Last Edit January 1, 1999

Illness will dampen things.
You simply are not home, or cannot drive, or shop, or decorate, whatever.
You want to curl up and rest.
You don't want to stand and cook.
You don't want to shop.
You want things back to normal.
And, with only one child at home, and relatives 3000 miles away, and with the extended-family moratorium on exchanging gifts by mail, the momentum is lacking.
I don't have a long Christmas list. Just my boys. And me.
We don't send gifts to others because, one year, I sent one sister, whom I had not seen in five years, a set of towels for the kitchen. You know the sets, pot-holder, dishtowels, packaged together.
And she sent me the same thing - different color.
You can't shop for people whose tastes you haven't seen for years. You are left with soap on a rope, ties, sausages, flowers and candy. Ugh!
When Dad was alive, my boys would shop for him and Margie. I remember a long sausage from Hickory Farms, almost longer than the child, clutched in the hand of my then four year old younger son. He carried it around the mall - it was Grampa's. He paraded it proudly. They wrapped it carefully. We had a slew of other little presents to send back. So the boys could wrap and package and learn to share. We added cookies and fruitcake and fudge. Homemade.
But a short number of Christmases before we lost him my Dad had requested no more stuff! He had everything! He wanted to throw things out! (Unheard of!)
He had to lose weight, so no more fruitcake, cookies or fudge.
He even asked for no more flowers, potted plants or wood stove accessories. No more tools. He had enough.
I understand this. I fill the largest trash bin they allow weekly and still have leftovers. You reach a point where material things are just things piled up you dust around. And time to dust is limited.
Dad had enough ties to sink a ship and enough kitchen towels to polish one.
And he wore work clothes. He used to be a machinist. He ran computer-driven drills and presses at the machine shop.
He was retired.
He worked in the garden all summer and cut cords of wood for the stove.
He wore a tie on Sundays if Margie could get him to church.
His attire for the garden was boxer shorts and a tank-top tee shirt. And high-top heavy work shoes and socks. Regardless of traffic driving by.
I think he is still in the garden. When we visit, I expect him to be there. I need to visit again sometime soon, before the younger one escapes. He needs to be reminded about family. It is a big one.
But flying at Christmas is a royal pain - as anyone in SFO and San Jose can tell you this year! And we haven't had time or money for four years to do that. Now it is time we don't have. I would like to escape in February or May. Maybe in June.
Sturbridge Village was a favorite when we went back on business in 1994. We loved the leaves (it was fall), the mills and the farms. We loved the cider and the house-drawn wagon you use as a trolley. I would love to see it in winter. We bought old-fashioned cookbooks.
Candy making. Cookies. Bread.
And in Boston, we saw the replicas of the ships that first sailed here. The one that hosted the Boston Tea Party. (The real one sank.)
They would fit in our livingroom. These were manned by crazy people!
Visiting family has to be done in chunks. Normally attached to a business trip if possible. The family is spread across the country, from LA to North Dakota to New York state to Florida to Connecticut.
And I have two families - which do not communicate. My brothers and sisters from my father and his second wife, and my brothers and sisters from my mother and her second husband. There are nine of us in total. I am the eldest. And 12 nieces and nephews. And 3 step-nieces and nephews. And my brother is now a grandfather! I diapered both him and his eldest son. I have only seen pictures of the new one.
All the aunts and uncles have left us except Uncle Mario and he is in Italy and in his 90's. (He taught my mother to make spaghetti sauce. I raised my boys on that spaghetti sauce. Bottled stuff holds no candle to it!)
I lost track of my cousins. I know I have some. But it has been 30 years at least except for one I saw 17 years ago. And I don't know about second cousins.
Keeping track of eight brothers and sisters is quite enough.
Christmas when I was growing up was an interesting time.
I remember teenage years the best, of course, so of course, I was always hungry. Why I always have food for the boys. Why they are free to forage in the cupboard, at the store.
But back then, we grew our own vegetables, most of our fruit and I raised our chickens and eggs. Rations had left their imprint on the household rules. We lived in the country - and were one step off the farm.
With 5-6-7 people in the house, cooking was constant. A cake made it one meal. Cookies 1-2 days. Max. If you paused, you lost. Pies had a one meal lifetime as well. So you got a lot of practice.
Christmas was an all out assault on the senses. My mother had decided somewhere along the way, that making a few dozen different cookie and candy recipes - a number that grew over time - and the more exotic the recipe the better - was the perfect way to celebrate Christmas. Combined with several pies. Also deadly.
Real butter.
Nuts.
Sugar.
Chocolate.
Cream.
Fill the freezer.
In my Dad's house, they filled three freezers with vegetables and fruit from the garden. My Dad grew enough to feed 20 people. As a hobby.
In my Mother's house, we filled freezers with cookies and fudge. And a few chickens. The ones that weren't laying eggs.
Lots of fudge. Lots of cookies.
Great for a teenager who was already 5'5" and into a size 14.
I have a sweet tooth. Small wonder.
I was raised on candy!
I refrain from this insanity now. I make 2-3 kinds of cookies and my children choose what they want. And what they want to help with. One year it was gingerbread men - I was mopping up flour for months. They had a great time. They didn't want to eat them. Just decorate them.
Another year it was pink and white sugar cookie candy canes. Keeping them on the tree until Christmas was difficult.
My youngest made sugar cookies for Thanksgiving this year. Literally. Reads recipes fairly well. Rolls out dough with ease. Has a collection of cookie cutters and I keep sprinkles in different colors around. He has perfected dough thickness and has learned to flour the cutters. Pretty advanced.
He sometimes will mix up the pumpkin pie - now the only kind I make. The only pie he eats. I make the crust. (Another black art.) He always makes the stuffing (see Recipes for the Lethal Stuffing he makes).
He knows how to cook the turkey.
There are always chocolate chip cookies. Even this year. We all eat those.
I prefer oatmeal cookies. One son does. One does not.
One likes nuts. One barely tolerates them.
One likes chocolate, one is allergic to it.
We all break out.
I like raisins. My youngest does not.
My youngest will not eat fruit pie. My oldest likes my apple pie. I'll make him one for his birthday.
This year, my youngest son opted for fudge. So I am about to make some.
And we spread this bake-a-thon from Christmas to New Year's - I believe in speading it out.
I bake one kind of home-made bread. Not three or four different ones.
I no longer bake Christmas stollen (bread with citron) even though I love it. The kids do not. I can't eat it alone. Not anymore.
I like fruitcake. I didn't make one this year. (No one knows how to serve a fruitcake anymore! It is not served hard! You soak it for 3 months in port wine. It should be soft enough to cut with a thin plastic spoon! It is good! It lasts! It keeps! It is full of fruit and nuts!)
But it is also high in calories so I am forgoing it for now.
I also gave up mince pie. I make mine with raisins, walnuts, wine and apple cider added to the base. Two crusts. But I am the only one who eats it. So I make one at Thanksgiving and have my piece warm (with French Vanilla ice cream) and freeze half for Christmas. I have a tablsp or so per day. Spread out the calories. Ha. The calories spread out anyway!
So I gave it up.
My Dad, when I lived near him, liked my fruitcake, mince pie and bread.
I used to be one of several people who liked mince pie. It used to vanish after 1-2 days. No more. Ah well.
Now, I still love fudge. Peanut butter. Chocolate. You name it. At fairs we always get a quarter pound of that special stuff they have. You know where you watch them cool and shape it. And you have to decide between a dozen flavors and by then you want them all.
And it is soooo sweet your face hurts.
I am trying to keep my fingers out of the no-set fudge my son played at making last night. His first attempt. It is chocolate taffy in the freezer. It calls to me. I melted a mass over ice cream for him. He ate it all. It is sweet. Not grainy. Just unformed. He has admitted to not following directions.
And then he told me he wanted the juicer running on QVC (today's special).
So he could lose weight!
Great! Now we have this evil fudge stuff in the house.
Complete with his finger prints.
It's gooey. Chocolate taffy when cold. Soup when not. You just want to dip your finger it. Or a spoon.
But he also wants me to make real fudge.
I am rusty. Fudge is a black art, not a science.
I am trying to resist.
The chocolate is calling me.
I am getting the juicer.
And a scale that checks body fat.
I am drinking my Medifast.
The NordicTrack is set up (I can't lean on the balance pad yet however, I haven't healed that much.).
The weight machine is being unburied in the garage.
I will be walking at lunchtime when I get back to work.
I hid the cookies in my son's room.
I made a resolution to lose 30 more pounds.
I will be into that purple suit!
And I will sit on his knee again! Maybe! (You know whose knee to which I refer. Tall, blond, haunts me when I sneak decaf!)
Now I need to go make fudge.
I am a nice Mommy.

The fudge was perfect for a few moments - a cookbook recipe - but, since I was beating it with a mixer - I don't have the abdominal strength to hand beat it - it turned from perfect to crumbly in an instant! One second glossy and one second dull. Too fast!
Undaunted, I reheated it to form a ball I patted out. Instant cement. Delicious.
I broke it into pieces and added it to the sliced apples in the chocolate chip container. The apples keep the cookies fresh.
I put this container in his room.
If I keep the door shut, maybe I won't hear the siren song of the chocolate.
He suggested that I try overbeating his liquid fudge. So I defrosted it. In the oven.
I tried beating this chocolate mess (I've reboiled it three times to no avail). I put it back in the freezer. It is now definitely chocolate taffy that tastes like fudge. It is the recipe from the back of the marshmallow fluff bottle - with added kayro syrup, butter and vanilla. These ingredients lowered the sugar-coma quality of the mess.
Combined with the boiling and beating, they changed it in other ways.
It can now bend spoons.
It almost broke the fork.
It is too sticky to slice.
It is great.
It is evil.
My son loves it.
Next year, I'm sticking to brownies.
Happy New Year.