Can We Talk 2

Christmas Food and Fruitcakes

         Every home has its own special food or memories of food at Christmas. For us, it's oyster stew for breakfast. Some people have seafood. Or they repeat the Thanksgiving meal. Beef is a big seller according to local butchers. Other things vary according to trends and people. Even within my own family, "traditions" have changed a little.

         When my mother was alive, she always fixed potato salad for special occasions. She had gotten many compliments on it, so it was her signature dish. I got tired of it, and reached a point where it didn't seem fancy enough for our increasingly large meals. As the family increased to include grandchildren, then the spouses of grandchildren, and their guests, we began having a buffet. Now we've lost my mother. my brother, and my niece's husband. Because of the small children, they don't invite non-family like they once did. I haven't either in years. The kids are all picky eaters. So we could downsize. I would love less cooking and pan washing. But my dad is almost 90, and he's got to have a long list of things. He gets very upset when I try to narrow down the list. He gets kind of hyper, too. He's usually mellow, but getting ready for a holiday, he stresses out the way my mother used to do. I've been ready to walk out a few times in the last few days, but I digress.

         I made shaped sugar cookies for the first time in years. I had forgotten how time consuming and expensive cookie making can be. Dad might eat them all before any guests get here! I also made pumpkin bread and banana bread, which takes me back to my pre-marriage days, when I had time and energy to do all those things and didn't need sleep. Eggs are boiled and peeled, but not deviled until tomorrow. We went through a phase when my oldest brother was still alive of making appetizers. Everyone brought an appetizer home to our parents. You could fill up on stuffed mushrooms, wrapped olives, cheese dips, and so forth, before even saying the blessing. That phase is over. Once in a while, one of the adults will bring whatever he or she happens to have, but nothing you can count on. We try to be sure peanut butter or goldfish are in the house for the picky eating kids.

         Dad obsesses over seafood salad and insists on making it himself. He doesn't follow Mom's recipe. He puts so many onions and celery in it, that I can't eat it. You can barely find the whitefish, crab or shrimp. It's chock full of Old Bay, but he plans to sprinkle dill weed on it before serving. I think that's one flavor too many, but it's his salad.

         When we were kids, Mom always fixed a fresh coconut cake for Christmas. She'd drill a hole in the fresh coconut and drain the milk first. Then she would crack it in pieces and let us help carve out the coconut from the shell. She'd grate it. When the cake was done, she poured the coconut milk on it slowly before adding a cooked frosting. Then the fresh coconut would go on. And we always had some cookies for Santa that somehow survived all the kids and my father.

         Then there were fruitcakes. She'd start early in the fall. The nuts had to be cracked and picked. Almonds had to be blanched. You bought the candied fruit whole and chopped it up. There were dates and two kinds of raisins. It took a long time to prepare the fruit and nuts which were soaked in a huge bowl overnight with apricot nectar. (I still have that bowl which no one is allowed to touch.)My job, I hated, was to prepare the paper linings. You took brown paper bags, cut the paper to fit the sides in flat sheets, the middle tube, and circles to fit the bottom. Our pans were two piece pans, so the cake was easily removed from the pan. It took two layers of brown paper, and one layer of wax paper. The brown paper had to be greased with Crisco. This made my skin crawl. The feel of the grease on the course brown paper was creepy. But Mom insisted that I do the whole job by myself and get it perfect. When the center section with the middle tube was ready, I had to insert it into the pan.

         Having the fruit mixture and the pans ready was one day's work. The next day, she mixed the cake batter with a zillion spices. She would stir in the fruit and nuts, then empty into the pans early in the day. It took hours to bake. That's why so much paper was needed--to keep the cakes from burning. When done, only my mother could remove them from the oven. They were way too heavy to let a kid try to move them hot. The center tube came out, and the cake cooled still on that middle section. They were yummy when we were finally allowed to sample them. That could be weeks away. She would pour on just a little bourbon (we kids could never taste it). It would be wrapped in foil and placed in a tin box to keep. When it was finally cut, it was sliced so thinly. But it was delicious. The cakes were so expensive and timely, that we made them last a long time. We'd still be using the same one in March. It was a special treat to get a slice. We loved biting into the fruit. The cake had a good flavor, if you picked the fruit out of it. Some pretty green and red cherries were always cooked on top with some pecan halves in a decorative array.

         Mom's cakes were very popular. Some folks we knew in New York would call her early and ask her to reserve one for them. She made loaves rather than the round tube for outsiders. They were a little easier to paper; they still took a long time to bake. A loaf cake weighed over six pounds. But they got less popular in the general public. Commercial fruitcakes helped give them a bad name. There were more jokes about fruitcakes than there were actual cakes. So it became difficult to find the fruit. What you see in the produce section today is not what my mother used to buy. Country stores were the last to sell it by the pound, like a deli. By then Mom was back at work full time. Although she was willing to try despite her schedule, the ingredients just weren't available at an affordable price.

         There are some other special memories of Christmas food and drinks. I love hot apple cider. A local nursery served it while you shopped, and the whole store smelled of spices while gentle Christmas music played. I had a friend, actually a couple, who made glug. They're the only ones who ever made it in my circle; they liked to drink. (They threw great St. Patty's parities.) A guy my dad worked with was alone every Christmas morning. His wife was an RN, so he would drive her into work, then stop off at our house for breakfast. He would bring us coconut macaroons. Somehow I fixed it in my childish head that they were a Christmas treat. When his wife retired, we stopped getting them, but I still have the memory.

         What foods trigger Christmas memories for you?